


In the Breach

by cruisedirector, Dementordelta



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anonymous Sex, Children, Churches & Cathedrals, Confessions, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Happy Ending, Falling In Love, First Time, Fix-It, Glory Hole, Intimacy, Law Enforcement, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Madeleine Era, Middle Aged Virgins, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Mostly Movieverse, Oral Sex, Parenthood, Religion, Secret Identity, Uniforms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:01:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 57,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dementordelta/pseuds/Dementordelta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the mayor of Montreuil learns that Inspector Javert may be planning to investigate the vices of the wharf, he takes advantage of the anonymity afforded by the night and the old buildings. But nothing goes as he expects that night, or, really, for the rest of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esteven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteven/gifts), [Miss M (missm)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to missm and esteven for beta, discussion, commentary, clothing advice and much more; also thanks to anniemacdonald, carmarthen and avon for more discussions and historical information.

In every town, whether the people thrived or were so poor that their children starved, certain human activities could not be eradicated. Valjean had seen it from the perspective of a peasant and a mayor both. There were always women desperate enough to sell themselves, always men greedy enough to pay for what they wanted. Even the best of towns could not keep wicked men from seducing virgins nor feed the children of such women led astray.

When he could think of no way to protect them all, Valjean thought it most merciful not to judge their actions, born most often of need or despair.

And there were people of a different sort -- men, and, Valjean supposed, women -- who did not love as others loved. It was not vice as he understood it, though he knew the Bible named certain acts between men as sinful. Valjean could understand why such acts would be called abominations when men and young boys were coerced and forced by stronger men, which he knew all too well took place in prisons and in the bowels of ships.

But the inclination itself, the urge to love passionately as well as fraternally, did not seem to him to merit such condemnation. If this was because he suspected he might harbor such feelings, they never troubled him sufficiently to warrant confessing them. Not until Javert appeared in Montreuil.

Valjean had long known what took place in the abandoned buildings by the wharf. In the dark lit by no candles, where crumbling walls and cluttered alleys hid a wealth of secrets, men crept out to meet one another. Some of them might have been indulging their basest lusts, betraying their wives, moving from partner to partner before they could be discovered, but some, Valjean knew, sought comfort and companionship more than the satisfaction of their desires. As mayor, he had been content to ignore the wicked and the good alike. But Javert would refuse to believe that there could be one virtuous man among that lot.

From the moment of the Inspector's arrival, Valjean knew that he must protect himself. He risked enough whenever he chose to help a prostitute or give money to a young mother who had lost her husband. Gossip could be borne, but too much investigation into his actions could be dangerous. So when one afternoon he overheard a veiled warning from one young man to another that suggested Javert had discovered the men of the wharf, Valjean could not think of a way to help them. Where once he might have suggested that the police turn their attention to more pressing problems, he kept his tongue.

In the dark of night, he followed Javert to the buildings by the water, hoping that he could give some sort of warning, overturn rotting barrels or knock down rusting traps before Javert could make any arrests. For several hours, Javert only watched, disguising himself behind the rotting planks of an old boat. From his own hiding place on the highest floor of a building half-washed to sea in a winter storm, with the ground lit by moonlight, Valjean studied the Inspector as his eyes darted about. He could see Javert making note of men as they arrived, alone or rarely in pairs.

Valjean had never paid it much attention from the level of the wharf, but there was another building with most of its roof torn off, held in place by a single large wall that cut through its center. While some of the men greeted one another with handshakes or even the occasional embrace, the men who entered the shattered building did so stealthily, creeping along the wall to a particular spot and waiting. It did not take long for Valjean to realize that there was hole in the wall. He understood it at the same moment that he understood why men would wait on either side of the hole for someone to appear opposite.

Whether or not what those men did could be called an abomination, Valjean knew that the way he burned with the knowledge of it must be a sin. He had no right to take any pleasure from witnessing the secret desires of others. In watching the wall, he forgot to watch Javert, so he did not notice when the Inspector disappeared, slinking under cover of darkness back to the thriving town.

He wasn’t sure what he would do the next evening, nor whether there was anything he could do about the Inspector’s determination to rid the town of vice, even those that did no harm. Perhaps Javert would have moved on to another area of the town, to harass beggars or lazy mules. In his heart, though, he knew Javert would be back at the wharf, just as he knew he would take up his post there as well.

Javert was not hard to spot, not in the light of the half-moon when Valjean knew the man’s habits, though Javert did not wear the hat with silver braid that would have identified his role at once to anyone who saw it. Clearly Javert was trying not to lean forward too much from his concealed spot. It was difficult not to smile at the intensity in his posture, though Valjean knew their situations were precarious. 

Should he continue this silent vigil, letting Javert compile whatever notes he wished, or should he create a distraction in another part of town, one that would compel his men to call for the Inspector? Even if he lured Javert away this night, he could not hope to distract the policeman forever. Around them, heedless of their hidden audiences, the men met, looked with longing at one another, and continued to slip, as unobtrusively as possible, into the half room at the end of the wharf.

Wrapped in indecision, Valjean did not realize that Javert was no longer crouching among the barrels at wharfside. Carefully he made his way down from his roof, keeping the collar of his coat high and his hat pulled low. His resemblance to the men skulking to meet each other did not escape him. 

Where would he go if he was a too-suspicious police inspector with more courage than cunning? Fortunately Valjean knew the dock area, though his daylight explorations and duties had not revealed all the places where a man might hide in the night. He made his way between the narrow buildings, keeping a sure eye on his footing, for the planks beneath him were coated in noxious liquids of unknown origins. There was an opening in the buildings ahead, and just in time he saw a shadow flit across it. Javert had found his way to the alley in front of the fallen building. 

His curiosity made him perhaps more incautious than he should have been, but he pressed closer, inching along the alley until he had Javert in sight. There was something rapt in his focus, the way he fisted the notes before sliding them into one of the pockets of his greatcoat. What had caught his attention? From this angle, Valjean couldn’t tell, and he did not dare move closer than Javert lay in wait, albeit unknowing of the trap he had waiting should Valjean be exposed here.

The shadow that was Javert flicked away and Valjean took a steadying breath, following. He was in this too deeply now not to know what the inspector planned to investigate tonight and in what way. When he poked his head out of the alley, however, Javert had disappeared again. This time, there was only one place he could have gone. The half-fallen building lay just ahead, the shadows deep upon the crooked doorway. No one else approached. The night was quiet. Perhaps the other men had finally gone home.

From outside, Valjean had no way to learn whether Javert intended to wait by the wall for a man to appear, offer himself, and suffer the horror and humiliation of arrest at Javert's hands. Perhaps the Inspector only intended to familiarize himself with the building so that he could plan a more elaborate trap to capture all who fraternized at the wharf, even those who did not indulge in the pleasures of the flesh but hoped to find friendship with others like themselves.

He took a step forward, knocking a stone loose with the side of his shoe, and froze at the sound it made. Javert did not appear, nor did anyone else. Moving on the tips of his toes, careful to test the uneven ground before pressing his weight down, Valjean crept toward the front of the shattered building where he knew Javert waited. The wood of the uneven doorframe made a splintering noise when he rested a hand against it to peer inside, but again there was no movement. What was left of the floorboards creaked when his foot pressed down on the wood, but only silence followed.

Should he call out, identify himself, pretend to be there in common cause with the Inspector? Perhaps then Valjean could find a reason to convince Javert that the men who came to the wharf did not threaten the peace of Montreuil. Yet Valjean could guess what Javert would think if he had seen the mayor of Montreuil creeping in under cover of darkness. He would think Monsieur Madeleine had a private reason for wanting to protect such men.

Valjean had reached the spot along the wall where the brick began to crumble away. In the pale light of the partially obscured moon through the nearly demolished roof, he could see Javert's leg in its high boot. Though the Inspector usually held himself quite still, even when buffeted by storms or enduring shouts, Valjean could see that Javert was moving restlessly now. One more step brought him opposite Javert, though the hole in the wall extended only to the level of his chest. He could not see Javert's face, nor Javert his own.

"You took your time coming inside. I thought perhaps you intended to run away," Javert muttered. With his voice hushed and the wall obscuring its tone, Valjean wondered if he would have known who stood there had he not watched the Inspector make his way toward the building.

"It is very late. I'm surprised to find anyone else by the wharf," he replied in a whisper. After so many years of practice to hide the accent of his youth, it was surprisingly easy to disguise the more cultured tones in which he now took such pains to speak, to mimic the local workers as if he too had been born near the sea. "What keeps you out so late?" It was a risk, for if Javert intended to arrest him, Valjean would need all the weight of Madeleine's authority to convince the Inspector that he was there in common cause, not to contribute to the vices of the wharf but to see that they represented no threat to the town.

"There are whispers about this place," Javert murmured in reply. "I thought I would see if there was any truth to them."

If Javert had not declared at once that he had come to arrest any wrongdoer he encountered, then perhaps he spoke fairly. "You only came to look?" Valjean whispered. "You have not come here before?"

There was a momentary hesitation. "I watched last night. I saw less clearly." It was an odd reply. If Javert had sent other policemen on the same mission, perhaps he believed that he spoke to another officer who had spotted him lurking by the wharf. But if that were so, it was odder still that Javert had not identified himself. Perhaps he wished to lure his unknown new acquaintance into his confidence, in the hope of learning the names of other men who frequented the wharf.

The silence stretched. It was possible that Javert wanted to make an arrest after all and was waiting for Valjean to make a suggestion that would warrant such a course of action. "I have never come here either," he said, keeping his voice low and his tone coarse. "I too heard tales about this place. But I do not believe the men who come here mean any harm."

He expected Javert to launch into a lecture about moral behavior and the need to root out wickedness, the same sort he had overheard Javert give to desperate women caught sleeping in the streets. Yet once more Javert was silent, and a strange idea entered Valjean's thoughts. He wondered whether Javert was curious about the wharf's secrets not only as an officer of the law, but because, like Valjean, he had felt the same impulses in himself. The idea stirred warmth in Valjean's belly. He had expected the Inspector to be the rigid, severe man from Toulon who would countenance no such weakness in anyone.

Perhaps something had happened to make Javert question his belief that all men were either righteous or irredeemable. "Now that you have come here, what will you do?" Valjean asked him, his boldness at once turning to shock at his recklessness. The fear flitted through his mind that such a display, after many years of going meekly unnoticed, might lead to another arrest, another enslavement. 

There was a rustle from the other side of the partition, though Valjean could not fathom what was being shifted about. It did not sound like the scutter of rats or the footfalls of another visitor to this desolate place. He tried to imagine what tools of his trade Javert would have brought with him, whether the white scars around Valjean's wrists would welcome new brothers tonight. 

Another silence fell, then the clean sounds of crossing the small space and halting, military-style, both feet aligned together. The boots, even after having been through the filth outside, still gleamed with a regulation polish. Valjean felt his breath hitch, fighting the urge to flee, to turn heel and run, whether Javert had recognized him or not. Then Javert was standing directly beside him with only the crumbling wall between them, close enough to feel each other’s breath if the wall had not bisected the room.

Before he could discern Javert’s intentions he heard another faint rustle, then a fine fat prick was thrust through the opening. “This is what I will do,” came the rough voice, so close. “What will you do?”

Valjean was rapt at the sight of the not quite soft but not fully erect cock. If he had come here to learn how deeply his impulses could rouse him, he had his answer, though he could not guess whether Javert meant it as an offer or a test. Nor was he startled so much that he didn’t decide instantly what he would do. Valjean was not the only one contemplating this transgression, for it reflected no better on the one receiving as the one giving, and he very much wanted to transgress with this prick. 

“I will embrace you,” he said, sinking to his knees on the rotting floor. “Kiss you.” The words were scarce more than a wisp of air. As with so many of his accomplishments, it was sheer bravado. Like his other triumphs, he desired it ardently without quite knowing how to achieve it save by putting himself in heaven’s power. Perhaps he had no right to think of heaven in such a place, but he let himself believe that God would forgive this small bending.

Javert made a noise, almost a sob, half-muffled by the wall between them and perhaps by his own hand. The thick cock twitched as Valjean's breath blew across its head. It had been many years since he had seen another naked man, and he did not like to think of the men in Toulon, stripped of their clothes and their dignity. This man was not reduced to skin and bones, the hair on his body was thick and clean, the legs strong and steady. When Valjean put a hand upon one thigh, he could feel the muscle beneath quiver at his touch.

He leaned close and took a deep breath, learning how Javert smelled, discovering that, as he had long suspected of himself, such intimate proximity to another man aroused him. But it was the knowledge that this was Javert, so upright and stern, which made his own prick stir beneath his clothing. He lowered a hand to squeeze it while with the other hand he touched the balls that hung between Javert's thighs, drawing another moan from somewhere above. The thick cock twitched again, now quite erect, as Valjean lowered his mouth to kiss it.

He had little notion of how this was done, only what he had occasionally glimpsed in Toulon, when he had thought that the men in his own position must be desperate indeed for any sort of intimate contact to allow themselves to be used in such a manner. Since then he had discovered that giving charity could be as uplifting as receiving it, and had guessed that offering such pleasures must be similarly satisfying. But he had not guessed that it would feel so delightful in itself, that the taste of another man's prick and the feel of him shuddering would arouse such passion in his own body. He did not know whether to offer apologies or thanks to God for this discovery.

"More of this, please, I beg you," Javert groaned. He did not sound like a man seeking evidence of a crime but like a man who might easily be coaxed into committing a greater one. His hips rocked, pushing his cock further into Valjean's mouth, making Valjean choke and withdraw for a moment to catch his breath while Javert trembled beneath his hand. "I apologize -- I have never -- you are the first --"

"You are my first as well," Valjean whispered, wondering what he could do to make his own voice sound younger, more plausible. He slid his hand around the thick base of Javert's prick, stroking, kissing the tip as he wondered what had brought Javert to this. Was there a man in Montreuil who stirred him as no one had done before, someone he was thinking of even as Valjean took him into his mouth?

Perhaps that was just as well, though Valjean did not like to think of it. If Javert's mind was on another, perhaps he would not wish to know who was on the opposite side of the wall. He didn’t want to give himself away, though he worried less about arrest and more about affecting Javert’s pleasure in this encounter. If he wanted a fantasy of heat and desire, Valjean would strive to give it to him.

“Your mouth does not seem to know you lack experience,” grunted Javert, hips moving despite the scant space between his body and the wall. 

“My mouth has never hungered for the taste of this before,” he replied, letting the words mingle with the wetness he had left upon Javert’s prick.

His mouth was filled with the flesh of it again, equal parts thrusting and swallowing, learning the shape of it with his mouth, this mouth that once spoken truly did hunger to be filled. There was no trick to the giving of pleasure, just to be careful and passionate and guard the sensitive parts, so like his own in form yet unlike them in detail. One of Javert’s hands touched the edge of the crumbling wall, fingers clenched tightly around it.

“Touch me.” It was not an order but Valjean obeyed, putting his own rougher fingers over Javert’s, sliding his lips away for a breath, admiring what he had done despite his lack of skills. His own cock was straining his trousers but he could not rub the bulge or risk toppling over ungracefully, and worse, risk discovery of his identity. A remarkable noise sounded from the other side of the wall, the sort an animal might make when searching for food or drink, desperate and needy and filled with orders and pleas that were wordless yet perfectly understandable. 

“Yes...yes,” Valjean whispered before wrapping his mouth around Javert’s prick again. The sounds Javert was making, the moans and sobs, made Valjean's cock throb. How must it delight to have warm lips wrapped around that sensitive skin. How pleasurable it would be to feel a tongue licking away the salty drops that collected in the slit, to have one's prick compressed by a swallowing throat, how long would it take to...

Again Javert made a noise like none Valjean had ever heard. "I must warn you, no more -- oh, going to --"

Javert's hips bucked, but Valjean did not release the prick from his mouth even when bitter fluid came flooding out of it. He swallowed Javert's seed, not much liking the taste but very much liking the way Javert clutched at his fingers and cried out. His own prick ached for such release.

"Again I apologize." Javert's voice sounded breathless, ragged. "I did not expect that so soon." Valjean heard him swallow. "I know little of the customs of this place. Do you want...?"

Javert did not need to complete the question for Valjean to understand what he was asking. His prick desperately wanted to trade positions with the prick that had just withdrawn itself from Valjean's mouth. But he thought of the dangers. Even if Javert had no intention of arresting his partner in this furtive act, he was inquisitive and suspicious by nature. Valjean's shoes might be as recognizable as Javert's boots, his clothing might give him away. Agonized, he hesitated.

"Let me at least attempt it." There was greater confidence in Javert's voice. "Please. If I am to understand what drives men to this place, I must learn more of what you have just done for me."

"Give me a moment." Pressing his fingers against the wall, so cold after feeling the heat of Javert's skin, Valjean pushed himself to his feet. He removed his shoes, letting his trousers puddle around his ankles. There were no obvious scars on his legs, but his bare ankles, marked from years in chains, would give him away. Trembling all over, though not from the chill, he returned to the wall, to Javert. With a silent prayer that God would give him some sign if this was hateful in His eyes, he stepped close and thrust himself into the opening in the wall.

“This is quite fine,” Javert said, though his voice caught, nearly hesitating. A consequence of kneeling, perhaps, Valjean thought. Another tremor ran through him, perhaps of nervousness, mixed with undeniable arousal. 

“I can take no credit for it,” Valjean said, the quiver reaching his voice as well despite his efforts to keep it hoarser and rougher than his usual speaking voice. “My form comes from God and the arousal from what we just did.”

There was a pause, and for a moment Valjean feared the mention of God had awakened the moral reformer in Javert. Once a man’s passions were satisfied, it was easier to look down on others who were still in the grip of theirs. “That excited you?” asked Javert, sounding genuinely curious.

“Very much,” Valjean said, though it came out as a moan, for something warm had enclosed the tip of his cock, just the tip, licking across the head. All the words he’d meant to say about his own eagerness for this sort of passion flew from his head, replaced by coarser, more exotic phrases, the sort Valjean rarely used, even alone. “That excites me more,” he added, needing no artifice to groan out the words.

Javert was not as tentative as Valjean had been, as though once he’d made up his mind he was as unstoppable as a gale. His lips slid down Valjean's cock further than Valjean would have guessed possible, drew back almost to the head, then did the same again. Valjean uttered a muffled profanity. He would not have guessed that the suction and the wet heat could possibly feel so good, either. He had always relieved the ache of his own arousal as brusquely as possible, feeling both shame and guilt at the need, though strangely he felt neither with Javert so willingly moving his mouth upon the straining flesh.

Would it delight him so much if it were a stranger on the opposite side of the wall? No, the thought of it repulsed him. It might not be for himself to judge how other men assuaged such urges with others, but Valjean had never craved a faceless encounter for the sole purpose of indulging his desires. What made his prick swell with such welcome need was the knowledge that the sternest man he had ever known knelt on the other side of the wall, filled with the same curiosity and perhaps the same longings.

It was difficult to remember the face of the guard who had so heartlessly patrolled the prison when the image that filled his mind was of the bashful reverence in the eyes of the policeman whom he had welcomed to Montreuil. Valjean's fingers fumbled through the narrow opening, barely able to reach to stroke Javert's cheek. He felt Javert's face twitch in surprise, though Javert did not falter in his attentions to Valjean's cock. "You give me great pleasure," he whispered. "I don't know how long I will last."

Javert hummed, a sound that vibrated through Valjean's loins, then swallowed around him as if in encouragement. Helplessly Valjean bucked his hips, unable to keep them still. He had never imagined such bliss, now he knew why men would commit such vice to experience it, though it still mystified him that any man could enjoy it with someone unknown to him. So much of the joy of this came from knowing who crouched on the other side of the wall, though it still seemed likely that Javert must be imagining someone else, some better man, not a former convict; perhaps someone Javert had known long ago, or perhaps a fantasy of a lover, someone too perfect to exist in this world. Someone like the man Valjean pretended to be, the upstanding, pious mayor of this town, not a man with a secret past.

Was it possible that Javert admired Madeleine in such a manner -- that he would do this for him knowingly, willingly? The idea of being known, even welcomed, was enough to send Valjean over the edge, though he wanted to keep thrusting forever. His body got its wish, spilling his essence into Javert’s mouth before he could do more than utter a warning of what was to come. 

“Forgive me, Mon --” he began, but the slight shake from the head still enclosing his prick altered his sentiment. “I meant to at least...”

Javert’s cheek pressed against Valjean’s fingers. As in all things, Javert did not shy away, keeping his lips around the convulsing flesh until it began to soften. “Do not apologize, I beg you,” he said and the roughness of it sent a quiver through Valjean. There was the ghost of a caress against his fingertips again, then Javert was on his feet, his boots still close to the wall. Fumbling with his own clothing, Valjean righted his trousers, listening to the rasp of breath on the other side. 

“Did you learn what you wished?” Valjean asked, needing no artifice to roughen his voice. 

Javert cleared his throat. “I believe I will need more information.”

Valjean felt his throat grow dry, uncertain what Javert was implying. He was gripped by the desire to follow Javert again and to discourage any sort of research Javert cared to conduct with any other man. "What will you do?" he asked, just as he had asked Javert before they began.

"That depends upon what you will do." Javert's voice was quiet, resigned to whatever answer Valjean might offer him. "Will you do this again? With me?"

"Yes. I will." In this Valjean could no more lie to Javert than he could to God. He stepped close to the wall, pressing his hand near the spot from which it seemed Javert's voice emanated. If there had been some way to press his mouth to Javert's, to seal the promise with a kiss...

But that was ludicrous. While Valjean might be held in the perverse grip of this desire -- to make love with the man who had been his captor and tormenter, to wipe out the past and wash the slate clean -- Javert merely wished to understand his urges in a place where he could neither be seen nor judged for them. No doubt he was willing to meet Valjean again because, having shared one encounter already, sharing a second with the same man would avoid the risk of revealing himself to another stranger. Though Valjean's form might have pleased Javert, the policeman would be horrified to learn that it belonged to the same convict who had once stood chained beneath his gaze.

Something brushed Valjean's thigh. He looked down to discover that Javert had put his fingers back through the wall. He had something wrapped around them, which Valjean was astonished to discover was the rosary he had handed to Javert on the day Monsieur Madeleine had greeted the new police inspector. "Are you a God-fearing man?" Javert asked quietly.

"God has shown me the greatness of his love," replied Valjean, brushing his fingers over Javert's.

"Then I ask you to pray with me." Turning his hand, Javert linked his fingers with Valjean's. They prayed in near-silence, only the occasional hiss or hum letting Valjean know that Javert's lips moved at all. As Valjean asked God for forgiveness for his sins and let his heart fill with love, he wondered whether the other man might be seeking the strength to punish himself and all those like him. But after several long moments, Javert took a deep breath. "And I ask you to meet me here tomorrow, after all the others have gone."

Much later that night, as the moon’s light slanted in through his window, Valjean dropped to his knees and prayed the rosary, then gave voice to his own prayer, one full of longings that he had never known how to give voice to. Surely it was no sin to love as he had loved tonight. The human heart had a vast capacity for love, though inside Valjean’s breast it had been sleeping, comforted by acts of kindness and charity but lacking desire. Tonight he had dared to imagine what loving and making love might be like and he did not find himself disinclined as he always had before--when one of his workers had swayed her hips a little too obviously, or a friendly shopkeeper had leaned over her counter a bit too long. 

He looked down at the rosary in his fingers and thought of the one Javert still carried. Did he carry it always, or just into the stews by the docks, in pursuit of his duty, where extra protection from God could never go amiss? Valjean set his own rosary by his solitary bed, draped around one of the silver candlesticks that looked, even to eyes used to their splendor, out of place in his humble room. Sometimes slumber had to be courted when anxious dreams plagued him, dreams or memories, but that night, sleep brought him peace.


	2. Chapter 2

It was difficult not to dash off to the docks as soon as darkness fell. Valjean forced himself to catch up on the stacks of paperwork required by his position, then to dress carefully, including a scarf to draw around his face in the event he was yet too early and was recognized. It would be scant protection, of course, but it made him feel better to have it.

He took up his watchful post from the night before, looking down upon the wharf, consumed with something like lust, though it was not for the act he was anticipating as much as the sight of his paramour. When the Inspector also took up the exact position he had from the last night, Valjean nearly wept with relief. 

There was less activity in the furtive shadows; perhaps the ladies further along the pier were the ones with the visitors this night, though there were a few pairs, a few meetings and several shadows along the walls that spoke of embraces. Still, Valjean waited until the same hour of the night as the night before, starting toward the sunken building, following nearly the same course, and exactly the same man, as he had before. 

“You came,” Javert said once Valjean had entered the small room. He could tell from the shadows upon the break in the wall that Javert was pacing.

“I said I would.” Valjean cleared his throat. “I have been eager to come back.”

“So have I,” came the quick, almost guttural response. The boots stopped in front of the hole in the wall that separated them and Javert reached his hand through. "Will you come here?"

It occurred to Valjean that had Javert wanted to, he could have crouched with his eye at the level of the hole to see the face of the man who had arrived to meet him. Valjean had worn his oldest clothing, with no item that would identify him as the mayor, but even in the dimness he thought it likely that Javert would recognize him if he saw him above the waist. His fingers wrapped around Javert's, squeezing the warm hand.

"Your voice makes me think that you must be a gentleman," mused Javert quietly, making Valjean's breath catch. Javert did not let him pull his hand away, stroking over his knuckles. "Yet these hands have known toil. You are not as young as any man I would expect to meet in such a place as this."

Valjean did not know how to reply. Despite his efforts to disguise his speech patterns, it was not surprising that a policeman would make such observations, yet there was no censure, only curiosity, in Javert's tone. He wondered whether Javert had returned to his home and thought as Valjean had of something more than furtive pleasure in the dark. He would never have guessed Javert to be susceptible to such feeling, even less than the base urges he had thought Javert came to the docks to punish.

He did not dare to imagine what Javert would say if the Inspector learned that the roughness of Valjean's hands came from laboring in a prison. Surely it would horrify Javert if he were to guess at the identity of the mayor of Montreuil, but in this place, no man could know who stood on the opposite side of the wall, whether a gentleman or a man fleeing his parole. It was a risk Javert had accepted willingly.

"I am older than you would wish," guessed Valjean.

There was an odd sound that it took him a moment to recognize as a chuckle before Javert squeezed his hand again. "I am not a young man myself. I would not have dared to hope to find anyone older than myself yet uncorrupted by such desires as these."

"You believe that what we did last night was corrupt?" asked Valjean sharply, forgetting even the attempt to disguise his voice.

"Strictly speaking, we violated no laws, though this is a place of lawlessness. I have watched men come and go all evening. Some of them have wives and some are little more than children. They should be at home with their families."

"Perhaps they have tried. Perhaps such places as this keep men like us from despair." The moment the words had left his lips, Valjean wished he could take them back, though he had spoken with all the passion he felt. He expected Javert to object that he was not like such men, perhaps even to blame Valjean for the desires he had so willingly indulged the night before.

For many long moments, there was only silence. Javert did not withdraw his hand, nor did Valjean release it. Finally Javert said, "You prayed with me. You don't believe this is a sin?"

Bending, Valjean pressed his lips to the back of Javert's hand. With his head bowed, he whispered, "Perhaps it is. But I have seen great evils in my life, and I am certain that even if this is a sin, God's love is stronger."

"I have never asked for God's love, only His justice. Love is a word men use when they wish to excuse their sins." That sounded very like the stern inspector whom Valjean had known before the previous night, yet Javert's fingers cupped Valjean's cheek. It was an intimate gesture, and Valjean's instincts told him to shy away. Of course Javert had never caressed him so, neither the convict's face at Toulon nor the mayor's in Montreuil, but Javert had police training and might recognize features by touch alone. With a soft moan, Valjean sank to his knees, turning his face to kiss Javert's hand again as Javert added, "Still, when I think of you, although I am ashamed to have come to such a place, I feel no regret that I found you here. And I wish to do what we did again."

“I have thought of it many times in the short span of time since we met here,” Valjean admitted, fumbling to open Javert’s trousers through the space in the wall. “Whether you thought my mouth was clumsy, or my hands too cold -- or rough,” he added, sliding his hand up one leg as Javert shoved his trousers down around his boots. “I wondered if you thought I was too fast, or forgot to mind my teeth.” The prick bobbing in front of his face mesmerized him, filling him with an urgency to kiss it and stroke it. 

“You had no faults in the act,” Javert said, as though a crisp compliment was the only sort he knew. “If you had not told me you lack experience as much as I, I would have taken you for --” 

Valjean gave into his desires, tasting the droplets that welled to the surface. As before, the taste was bitter and salty, but he let it spread upon his tongue and let himself savor it. When he had changed identities, he had learned to disguise his peasant upbringing, accepting the ways of gentler folk, though their tastes and habits had been strange at first. He had adapted as quickly as he could, smiling when offered strange foods and stranger wines. This was merely wine of another sort, one he had not known he wanted to sample until offered the chance to get drunk on it.

Javert moaned and a quiver went through his knees. Valjean kept his hand there, moving back and forth between the muscled calf and the smoother skin on the back of Javert’s knee. He was hard inside his own trousers but dared not touch himself, not when he knew Javert probably would offer to relieve his erection of the pleasure simmering within it. 

“You believe me then?” he asked, rubbing the side of his mouth against the soft flesh at the tip. He was comforted that, in this one thing at least, Javert believed him, though if his identity was known, Javert might believe that Valjean found the pleasure Javert had given him to be enjoyable only as a triumph of deception and conquest.

“It gives you no benefit to exaggerate or belittle your skills, not when there is nothing to gain.” Valjean smiled around the mouthful of prick. Trust Javert to have given thought to such reasoning, though his voice quivered as though he had difficulty recalling why such logic was necessary.

Valjean pulled back and rubbed his mouth around the head, wondering whether he looked like a dog who had stolen a bone from the family table and taken it to enjoy in secret. “To gain your trust, perhaps.”

“To what end?” He felt Javert shrug. “The trust of a stranger.” There was an edge to his voice now, and a thrust. “Please,” Javert said, “I am aching for you.”

Glory washed over Valjean as he willingly swallowed as much cock as he could, filling in the spaces with his tongue. A choked noise like the ones he recalled from the night before told him that Javert liked what he was doing. He let his hands explore more than he had dared the previous night, fearing that Javert would be offended if he tried to take more than was offered through the space in the wall and uncertain whether it changed the nature of the act.

Valjean had seen enough to guess that some of the men who came to the wharf desired such encounters precisely because they were furtive and forbidden, though he would have preferred to believe that fear and desperation drove most to seek companionship in such a way. Perhaps the secrecy made the meetings easier to atone and forget, just as it would be easier to forget a partner in crime who existed in memory only as a disembodied mouth or prick.

But Javert was neither faceless nor nameless to Valjean, and he felt no thrill at the thought of performing a surreptitious act of lewdness. It was far more exciting to know that this was Javert he touched.

Again, it did not take long; Javert shuddered and spent with a cry, his fingers clutching at Valjean's. "I had thought perhaps I exaggerated in my thoughts how good that felt," Javert panted as Valjean wiped his mouth on the edge of his sleeve. "But I'm afraid words will not do it justice."

"Why are you afraid?" Valjean asked him, smiling to himself. He left his fingers linked through Javert's, fumbling with his other hand to open his trousers.

Javert's fingers squeezed his. "Because I have no wish to stop doing it. There are practical concerns as well as moral ones." A pause, and Javert added, "And because as you do it to me, I grow excited at the thought of doing it to you. A man should not wish to debase himself so."

Valjean squeezed the fingers in return. Javert's uncertainty evoked a tenderness in him that sweetened his own arousal. "I feel no debasement. I feel fortunate that you would share this part of yourself with me. It makes me grateful."

"And eager to do the same, I hope."

The hand gave a tug at Valjean's. He watched as Javert's knee lowered through the space in the wall, then abruptly realized that his face was very close to the opening and fumbled quickly to his feet before Javert's eyes could make out his own in the dimness. "Very eager," he agreed, letting his trousers drop, glad that he had thought to wear the old shoes damaged when he helped repair the old church wall. Certainly Javert would have identified the shoes he wore the night before as those of a gentleman, but the mayor's own shoes might be more recognizable than most. He felt Javert's warm breath against his skin and moaned even before the lips descended, kissing his balls as well as his prick, exploring, as Valjean had, the many small ways of enhancing such pleasure.

When it was over, and he leaned heavily against the wall, his lower body still throbbing with release, he felt Javert's wet mouth brush over his thigh. "I might have called the first time curiosity about what draws men to this act, and the second an investigation into how such temptations bring about the unnatural pairings I have seen among all classes of men from judges to convicts. But if I do it a third time, I must acknowledge how deeply the weakness runs in me."

The words wounded and thrilled Valjean all at once. Swallowing, he took a moment to collect his thoughts. "Not all men were meant to marry or take the cloth," he whispered. "Else there would be more children than any town could feed and more priests than the parish churches could hold. I think you are a good man. We have done nothing to injure one another."

"You tell me that, but you don't know me. Suppose you were to learn that I had a wife? Or that I was meant to be somewhere else this night, minding the ill or protecting the innocent?"

It was strange to find himself smiling at Javert's recriminations. Valjean recalled all too well the man's sense of duty at Toulon, the rigidness that could become brutality if Javert believed the law demanded it. Valjean was not surprised to learn that the same inflexible code governed every moment of Javert's own life. "I doubt that you would share such concerns with me if you did not strive to be upright and expect the same of me," he said.

He felt Javert sigh against his skin and reached through the wall to stroke Javert's cheek as Javert spoke. "I was glad yesterday to discover that you were not a wanton sodomite. Yet how much simpler I would find it, if you had been the sort of man I expected to encounter here, to tell you that we must not return to this place."

As best he could, Valjean cupped the bearded chin in his hand. "You must do what you think is right, of course," he murmured. "I hope you will forgive me if I do return, and if I hope that you will do the same." Valjean knew full well the risk he took in making such an admission. It was not impossible that Javert would appear tomorrow just outside the wall in an attempt to learn the identity of his partner. Even worse than the thought that Valjean might have to confront him was the fear that in his recriminations, the Inspector might arrest the wrong man.

Javert kissed his palm before withdrawing, though whether he meant it as reassurance for Valjean or comfort for himself, Valjean could not guess. "I suspect that tomorrow will be much like today. I will wake determined not to give in to temptation. I will think of the men I wish to impress with my work. I will keep busy and refuse to let myself remember you. But as night falls, I will find myself compiling reasons to return here. And by the time I arrive, my greatest fear will be that you, not I, will have found the strength to stay away."

If only there were some way to embrace the man, to kiss his mouth...but of course Valjean did not dare. Instead he said, "Last night you asked me to pray with you. Would you do the same again?"

There was a long hesitation, but at last Javert cleared his throat. "I will." There was a pause as each of them wrestled with his clothes, then Valjean saw moonlight reflecting off the beads of the rosary suspended from Javert's fingers in the space between them. If it was a strange place for holy words, they were no less heartfelt.

Valjean did not sleep well that night. He was alternately aroused by fantasies of Javert here in his own bed and haunted by Javert's guilt. Would it have been kinder to pray that Javert not return to the wharf the next night so that the other man might find himself more at peace? Perhaps, but Valjean discovered that he could not pray for that, and asked for forgiveness instead.

It was likely that he and the Inspector would never have spoken so much had they not met under the protection of secrecy and anonymity, yet Valjean had confessed things aloud to Javert that he had never spoken to a priest. He had never formed an attachment to anyone so quickly nor so deeply, nor did he know whether it had happened because of the physical intimacy or in spite of it.

No matter how many times he reminded himself that this was the same cold-hearted guard he had known in Toulon -- that those merciless, pitiless qualities were within Javert still -- Valjean could no longer think of him without a flush of happiness that had less to do with the satisfaction of his body than with the thought that God had allowed him to feel love toward someone for whom hatred had once burned in him. He hoped that within Javert he might find the same capacity, if not for love, then for forgiveness of them both.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day was a difficult one. It rained for most of the morning, leaving puddles of mud everywhere, making Valjean wonder how he could creep to the wharf without bringing the evidence back all over his clothes. The rain stopped in the afternoon, yet Valjean was short-tempered with his foreman when he learned that the work was behind schedule. Business was disrupted throughout the town when a cart overturned, spilling apples everywhere and killing the horse that had pulled it.

And when Valjean returned to his office, there stood Javert waiting. His heart leaped into his throat. It was absurd that the sight of the Inspector's face should move him so; this was still the face of the man who had been coldly indifferent to his suffering in prison, who had treated him like something base and repugnant. Yet Valjean could not banish the urge to touch the warm skin that he knew lay under the uniform, to kiss the lips that pressed together nervously.

Like the first time they had met, Valjean had to turn away to compose himself before he could speak. "How may I help you?"

Also like the first time they had met, Javert offered him a small smile. Now that Valjean had watched him on the busy streets, trying to keep the peace, he knew how rare such smiles were to see. He tried not to think about how those lips had felt against his fingertips, brushing his thigh, sucking his prick.

"My report on the robbery of the hospital, Monsieur le maire." Someone had smashed a window and clubbed two dying men, apparently with a stick, allegedly seeking laudanum. Bottles of medicine had been scattered, though the doctor kept the laudanum locked away and did not believe the attempted theft had been successful. Javert held out a sheaf of papers.

"Ah. Thank you." Valjean barely glanced at the pages. Javert's expression was expectant, even hopeful, so he added, "You have done excellent work to have gathered so much evidence so quickly."

"Such evil men must be brought to justice." The tone of Javert's voice made Valjean study him more closely. Did Javert ever consider the desperation that must bring a man to such a crime? It was hard to reconcile this sanctimonious rigidity with the doubt and confusion of the man he met at the wharf. "I am content if my work satisfies you."

Javert seemed to Valjean to be a man of few pleasures besides the satisfaction of work. It did not escape his attention that Javert had flushed slightly, basking in the small compliment the mayor had paid him. The Inspector had always admired Madeleine, mused Valjean, even on that first day when the warmth of Javert's greeting had contrasted with the formality with which Madeleine had welcomed him. The success of the factory and the relatively few serious crimes in the thriving town were responsible for Javert's regard, though Valjean wondered too whether Javert gravitated toward men of authority. He felt his own cheeks reddening under the esteem of that gaze.

Was it possible that Monsieur Madeleine could have inspired the feeling that had brought Javert to the wharf? Valjean felt proud and contrite all at once, along with a touch of jealousy that was as ridiculous as it was undeniable. The lies he had told in Montreuil were mostly sins of omission, but where Javert was concerned, this deception seemed far worse. Even now, seeing Javert before him in the uniform of the police, Valjean felt his prick throb pleasurably. Abashed, he turned his face away.

"Your devotion to your duty is commendable. Please don't let me keep you from it." He nodded shortly, accepted Javert's stiff bow, and returned to the papers, though it was several minutes before he could concentrate to read them.

When at last night fell, he wanted nothing more than to race to the wharf, yet one interruption after another kept him from his desire. The foreman stopped him, full of excuses about the work shortages, and Laffitte came to discuss the factory's purchases for the season. When he left his home, children begged him to make animals from straw for them as he sometimes did, and one woman chased him down the street to ask advice about keeping her rabbits safe from predators.

It was very late when he reached the wharf, much later than the previous nights. Valjean did not climb to the spot from which he had surveyed the place but went directly to the ruined building with the broken wall. The moon was bright, the ground was dry, and he felt incautious, stepping too quickly over stones and creaking old wooden floorboards. Though it was a warm night, he kept the scarf high about his face and tried to walk hunched in on himself to disguise his height.

"I didn't think you were coming." Javert spoke before Valjean had crossed the space, his shadow darkening the space between the rooms. "I nearly left, myself."

"I'm sorry. I was detained. I never meant to cause you distress." As he spoke, Valjean unwound the scarf from his face, remembering to alter his accent once his mouth was no longer muffled by the wool.

"I am not distressed. I have obligations as well." Javert sounded very cross. "Perhaps we should not --"

"Come here. Please." Reaching a hand through the wall, Valjean grasped for Javert's fingers, finding a wool-clad thigh instead. "I'm very sorry. All day I have wanted nothing more than to be here with you. Even if you only wish to talk. I missed you..."

"Enough!" Javert spat. "You have not missed me. You don't even know my name. I know well enough what you have missed." There was a rustling sound before the weight of wool fell over Valjean's hand. "And I will let you have it. But quickly. I do not have all night to indulge you."

For a few moments, Valjean hesitated. He did not want Javert like this -- angry, resentful, distrustful -- but he did not know how to assure Javert that he did not take these meetings lightly without giving himself away. So he reached for Javert's prick, which was not as hard as it had been on their previous nights together. His fingers moved up and down, stroking it.

"I didn't think you were coming, and now I know how completely I have been beguiled by you," rumbled Javert. "I have fallen and I am being punished for it."

In spite of his unhappy words, Javert's prick was growing erect in Valjean's hand. Leaning close, he kissed the tip, feeling it twitch against his lips. "I doubt whether God could be half as displeased with you as you seem to be with yourself," he murmured as his mouth brushed along the length. "A wise priest once taught me that flesh is a constant burden and temptation to all men, and that men inevitably yield to it, but that such sins are small if they bring a man closer to God. He said, 'A fall on the knees may terminate in prayer.'"

"You are the one on your knees." Javert shuddered as his prick thrust between Valjean's lips, and Valjean welcomed it, sliding his mouth to take in as much as he could. "I had not imagined that this would affect me so," Javert choked out, his hips rocking as Valjean moved his mouth over the swollen heat. "I have devoted my life to the law and to seeking God's justice. I was born in disgrace, so I have always sought to know right from wrong and choose to do right."

Valjean remembered the uncaring, cold face of the guard at Toulon and shuddered softly too. He had thought Javert believed that all convicts deserved their cruel fate -- that such men could never change -- yet Javert himself seemed to be confessing that he wished to grow beyond the circumstances of his own upbringing. Valjean had asked the Bishop why some men were born in luxury and never given a reason to wonder why others were born desperate for food and comfort, even for parents. The Bishop had taught that different men were tested in different ways, that justice and mercy were not always easy for men to see.

But it did not seem that Javert had been fortunate enough to receive such wisdom. His knees trembled and his fingers grasped through the hole, clutching at Valjean's. Certainly this was not how the Bishop would have suggested that Valjean show love to a man in need, but he had taught Valjean that his obligation was to love and not to judge. Valjean clung to Javert's fingers, stroking the base of his prick and the tightening balls with his other hand, trying to convey with touch alone that he felt no disgrace at sharing such delight.

It did not take long for Javert to cry out and buck wildly, spending himself in Valjean's mouth when Valjean chose not to move away. The taste was still strange to him, yet not unwelcome. He swallowed and kept his lips in place as Javert stilled, panting, brushing two fingers across Valjean's cheek without releasing Valjean's hand. "I ought not to come here," muttered Javert. "Even if this is not great sin, it is weakness. Yet I feel no defilement. When you touch me I feel as if I have been given a gift."

"Love is a gift," Valjean murmured half to himself.

He felt Javert's legs tense as if for flight. "You mock me. This has nothing to do with love. If some other man had stood on my side of this wall two nights past, you would be here doing these base and wicked things with him."

Valjean took a shaky breath. His knees were sore from kneeling on the floor and his neck ached from bending to give Javert pleasure. Whether such discomforts gave him courage or made him reckless, he did not know as he spoke. "I would not have done this with any other man. Nor would I mock you. I followed you to this place, Inspector." A choked sound met his ears as Javert's fingers pulled free from his own. "At the time, I had thought only to persuade you not to arrest the poor souls who come here seeking solace. But when we spoke, I wanted to know you better. And I wanted to do what we did."

Javert had stepped back from the wall, yet Valjean could hear him breathing, a harsh and fearful sound. Would the man try to arrest him now? Would he flee? Or would he judge himself deserving of greater punishment? Resting his head against the wall, Valjean tried to imagine what he himself would dare to say if Javert visited Madeleine in the morning to report on this revelation.

Then he heard an unexpected sound. Javert was laughing.

"We meet at the place where men come to protect their secrets, only to discover our failings." The voice was scornful. "Men like us have no need of the devil -- we make our own hell. You may have disguised your voice and changed your shoes, but did you believe that you could hide who you were from me, Monsieur le maire?"

Valjean skittered back in shock, tripping over the crumbling floorboards and landing on his bottom. He gaped at the jagged hole in the wall until the shadow of a man blocked it. Then the man crouched until his face appeared. Even in the faint moonlight, there was no mistaking Javert's stern expression.

“Did you fall?” Javert asked. "Are you injured?" That might have been the policeman speaking, not the man whose prick had been in Valjean's mouth minutes before, yet the voice held concern.

Valjean managed to close his mouth and swallow. "Only my pride is injured."

Through the space in the wall, he could see Javert nod. "Stay where you are. I fear that if I try to come through, I will knock the bricks loose." Javert disappeared, his quiet footsteps growing softer yet, then disappearing. Valjean wondered whether he had run away when the sound of footsteps returned, this time on his own side of the wall. He had started to rise to his feet when Javert approached, coming to sit beside him, his shoulders brushing the wall.

“How long have you known?” asked Valjean.

Javert had brought his hat with him. It was not the bicorne worn by the police, but a cap he likely wore to disguise himself while approaching the wharf. Turning it over in his hands, he said, “I know you don't think much of my skills in this place, but I am a competent policeman. I know when I am being followed and I make it my business to know by whom.” 

Wild conclusions whirled through Valjean’s brain, surmounted by one in particular. “Yet you let me --” His mouth found the shape of a smile. “And have done for me in return.” They stared at each other as dust motes stirred up from Valjean’s fall and Javert's approach danced between them in the moonlight. “I did indeed wish to give you a gift. You and no other.” He smiled again, though warily, for Javert’s face had hardened. “And I do not think poorly of your skills in this place.” 

“All through the day I told myself I would not come back here tonight.” Javert crumpled an edge of the brim in his hand. “My flesh and I wrestled about it.” That expression came over his face, the one that reminded Valjean of street boys who never had enough bread, who would smile at ladies who passed, hoping for a coin or a smile. “I lost.”

Valjean slid his hands through the dust on the floor to right himself further, gathering up the edges of his coat before wiping his hands on his trousers. “You lost thrice then, for tonight is the third night.” 

Javert exhaled heavily. “I said I was a competent policeman, not a perfect man. I should feel vile and debased.” Something flitted at the corners of his mouth, something wistful, if Valjean were prone to fancy. “I should arrest us both.” 

Valjean recognized the threat as a hollow one. He chanced another small smile of his own, watching Javert turn the hat over in his hands. “Perhaps it is through God that we have found this gift we have given each other.”

“I have given you nothing but shame.” Javert spoke without looking up.

Already shaking his head, Valjean said, “Nothing we have done here has brought me any shame.” He gestured to the broken floorboards. “Apart from falling in such an undignified heap.”

Javert coughed. "You have never appeared undignified to me, and I have seen you half-undressed." Heat flooded Valjean's face. He had not yet removed more than his scarf, but he felt naked beneath Javert's regard, particularly since his unruly prick, unrelieved of its desires, made his trousers stand far out in front of him. Setting down the hat, Javert crawled forward until they were close enough to touch. The gaze he raised to Valjean's was challenging. "Perhaps you prefer not to risk such exposure with one who knows your name. Now that you know who I am, what will you do?"

Seeing Javert so close, gazing on his face, Valjean felt the same strange tenderness that he had felt hours earlier in his office. "I would like to do something that we have not done." The words made Javert stiffen all over as if he expected Valjean to demand the act singled out in the Bible as hateful to God. "I would like to kiss you."

Javert looked no less shocked at this than he had looked a moment earlier, though a small, startled moan escaped his lips. "I know no more of how to kiss than any other pleasure we have shared."

"Nor do I. But as long as you agree that it might be a pleasure, I would like to try." Leaning forward, Valjean took Javert's face in both his hands, stroking his thumbs over the whiskered cheeks. He supposed that others might not find the stern countenance handsome -- Javert was no longer young, nor did he have the practiced grace of a gentleman -- yet Valjean had never seen another mouth that he so desired to kiss. Though one bearded cheek twitched with tension beneath his fingers, Javert met his gaze steadily, even when Valjean tilted his head and moved so close that he could no longer see Javert clearly. "You are wrong to tell me that this has nothing to do with love," he whispered and brought his lips over Javert's.

Although he had kissed Javert's hand and thighs and prick, Valjean had never guessed that kissing Javert's mouth could evoke such strong feeling. It suffused his chest with warmth and made his prick throb in his trousers. It was awkward at first, for he did not want to stop but did not know how to continue; their chins bumped, then their noses, and Javert laughed, though the laugh had much of a groan in it. When he felt Javert's lips part, Valjean did not know what to do with his tongue, until suddenly he did.

This, then, was why girls whispered and men bragged and poets sang about kissing. It was power and surrender all at once, tasting of carnal needs yet touched by a longing for something more of the soul than the body. Valjean forgot even the urgency of his prick in this sensual feast of mouths and lips and tongues that stroked and thrust just as their hands did. 

“Surely this is a greater sin than the other,” Javert moaned, his eyes unfocused in the dim light. His fingers were clenched in Valjean’s shoulder as he kissed the side of Valjean’s mouth. 

“It is no sin at all,” countered Valjean, leaning in again, met by Javert’s lips, damp and urgent against his. It was just as inexpert as the first one, yet neither man broke away for many long, delicious moments. He wanted to pull Javert on top of him and kiss him until neither of them remembered their sins.

“You truly believe this?” Javert asked, rubbing his lips together. Perhaps they tingled as Valjean’s did. Valjean nodded. His legs had stretched out along the floorboards, Javert kneeling between them, eyes alit with passion. “Sin is seductive. Pleasure is not a weapon of God’s.”

Despite the earnest tone, Valjean chuckled, stroking the line of his cheek where the whiskers started. “This is no weapon, but a gift we exchange. I thought we had agreed.” 

“There have been few gifts in my --” Javert broke off and stared as Valjean caressed the side of his face. 

“All the more reason to cherish this.” Each kiss lasted longer than the one before. Valjean's prick ached as it rubbed his trousers, stretched taut across his lap, yet he did not lift his mouth away until he felt Javert reaching to stroke the bulge, a sensation that nearly undid him. "No -- I'll finish in my clothes --"

Again Javert kissed him, tongue thrusting into his mouth as Javert's fingers tugged his clothing open. Though Valjean's waistcoat got in the way, he was glad of it, for there was no easy way for Javert to pull it aside and reveal the scars Valjean took such pains to hide from him. "I would also like to do something that we have not done," Javert told him, settling between his legs as his hand began to move on the stiff cock that pushed up eagerly. "I would like to see your face while I do this for you."

Once more, heat flooded Valjean's cheeks. Although it was fully night, the bright moon illuminated the space around them with no roof to block its beams. He thought to protest, but Javert kissed his mouth again, then lowered his head, eyes still locked on Valjean's, and put his mouth on the eager flesh sliding as if of its own volition through Javert's fingers. Valjean had never dared to watch his own hand on himself, tugging angrily at his willful cock when it made wasteful demands, discarding the mess afterward as a reminder of his weakness. Yet watching the other man's head bob and hands stroke to give him pleasure, Valjean knew he would never again regret being capable of such feeling.

"Javert," he whispered, clutching at the Inspector's sturdy shoulder. The name tasted strange and sweet on his tongue. He could feel Javert's eyes studying him even as Javert's mouth moved on him, bringing him ever closer to the moment when all awareness would flee in an explosion of delight. "Please, come up here. Kiss me again."

Javert obeyed him, still stroking his hand over the now-wet flesh. The kiss tasted of desire and urgency, and as much as Valjean loved the heat of Javert's mouth around his cock, he loved this closeness too, the intimacy of being seen in the grip of such passions. How glorious it would feel to kiss undressed with their cocks straining together, or to yield his mouth to Javert's tongue as Javert's body opened to him, surrounding his prick in its heat --

Helplessly Valjean broke the kiss as he cried out, his hips jerking, seed gushing over Javert's hand. He knew that Javert was watching him, which only made the climax more intense. When his cock stopped pulsing, before he could catch his breath, he tugged Javert close and Javert kissed him once more, moaning into Valjean's mouth. Perhaps such acts were sin when done without care or feeling, but if this could not be love bursting into bloom between them, then Valjean had no name for what it might be.

“That was truly a gift,” Javert said with something in his voice that Valjean had never heard before, something that, if he had heard it someplace else, would have given him a quiver of familiarity, not quite recognized.

Javert's fingers were still embracing his slumping prick as if reluctant to let go now that Javert had brought it so much pleasure. “It's a gift I would give to you as well,” Valjean said once he had breath to speak. 

To his delight, Javert chuckled, free, at least for this moment, from the doubts and guilt that had wracked him. “I am not much younger than you. I’m afraid I am quite spent for the night.” He did remove his fingers now, sliding them slowly away. Valjean wanted to kiss his hand, kiss the place on his temple where his hat had flattened his hair, kiss the place just below the fastenings of his trousers where the buttons had dented the flesh. Anywhere his mouth could reach called to his lips. 

If he hadn't just spent himself, hearing Javert's suggestive laughter would have brought his prick back to attention. “Tomorrow evening, then? You will be recovered soon.” He watched as Javert wiped his fingers on the inside of his trousers, then he did reach for his hand, kissing the back of it. There was still a smile on Javert’s face when he leaned forward with the expectation of one who realizes he is desired. Valjean did want to kiss him again, sliding his own fingers into Javert’s hand as they pressed together. What would it be like to kiss with the taste of one another upon their tongues, he thought, and the idea made him groan. He had never imagined wanting such a thing. The furtive activities he had been reluctant witness to in Toulon had lacked such tenderness. 

“Perhaps we might meet in someplace more felicitous?” Javert suggested, rubbing his thumb over the back of Valjean’s hand. 

Valjean thought quickly. Though he had fantasized about taking Javert to his own home -- to his own bed -- the risk was too great. "There are rooms at the factory. No one would think it strange for me to be there late at night, nor for a police inspector to be seen entering the building." He squeezed Javert's hand. "I could hardly breathe, today, when I saw you in my office."

Javert returned the pressure of his fingers as he replied. "I did wonder what you would say if I turned myself in for my behavior, whether you would demand my resignation or inquire as to whether I knew the identity of my partner in crime. I looked for signs of guilt in you, but you behaved much as you always have."

It made Valjean feel as if he'd drunk too much wine to know that he shared such an intimate secret with Javert. "I feared that I would blush and stammer when I spoke to you, or that I would go too far to the other extreme and treat you with such coldness that you would find my behavior suspicious. I don't know why I didn't guess that you might already know."

"The purpose of this place is to avoid being recognized." Javert did not sound approving. "I confess to my relief that you knew my identity all along. It felt like a falsehood to keep it from you. No man would expect to find an officer of the law behaving as I did in such a place as this."

The confidence in Javert's gaze made Valjean drop his glance before his guilt could reach his eyes. As much as he, too, had disliked hiding the name of Madeleine from Javert while he himself knew who stood on the far side of the wall, it made Valjean ache to think what the Inspector would do if he learned of Madeleine's true identity. "Indeed, that is why this place exists," he murmured. "So that no man may know whether his opposite might be a policeman, a gentleman, a beggar, even a convict."

Javert's fingers reached beneath Valjean's jaw, tilting his face up so that the moonlight shone upon it. Valjean's breath quickened as eyes that let little escape their notice scanned his own. Javert opened his mouth as if he would speak, then shook his head and released Valjean's chin so that he might take his hand once more. The sense of reprieve was lessened when Valjean realized that Javert was once again studying his fingers, making note of the evidence of hard labor. "Monsieur le maire, do you believe that there is any dangerous convict roaming about Montreuil whose identity is not known to me?"

Valjean's breath shuddered in his chest. For a moment he was certain that Javert would denounce him then and there. Instead Javert pulled the hand to his mouth and kissed the wrist where it emerged from Valjean's sleeve, the buttons low and tight to hide the scars there.

"Forgive my boldness, but it feels strange to call you Monsieur in this place. If you will permit me to ask, do you have another name?"

If Javert did suspect, he might have been trying to trap Valjean into revealing himself, yet Valjean did not hesitate: "My mother called me Jean." Javert's brows lowered and his eyes grew unreadable, though something kindled in the depths of them. Then Valjean could not help himself. "Is there another Jean in your thoughts?"

"It is a common enough name. I knew a Jean, once, who resembled you. But I do not think you would like the comparison."

"You could not have cared for him?"

"He could not have cared for me."

Javert's voice revealed nothing beyond the words themselves, so Valjean did not dare to press further. "You must also have another name," he said instead. "What is it?" Javert's dismissive wave stirred up dust. He made a face and coughed. "But you must tell me, or I will be forced to call you by some dreadful little name. _Mon gendarme. Mon chevalier. Mon chasseur._ "

He expected Javert to scoff at him, but Javert's eyes grew warm. "I would not mind being _chasseur_ to you," he said, pulling Valjean into another kiss. They were definitely learning the ways of kissing. Javert’s tongue slid easily into his mouth now, stroking his own. “ _Oui, Jean_ ,” Javert murmured, and it seemed that other Jean’s memory had faded enough to give Valjean a thrill at the possessive sound of it.

“ _Mon chasseur_ ,” Valjean repeated, sliding his fingers down Javert’s cheek. “You will come to me tomorrow?” His mind was already racing with the precautions he would have to take, but he knew he would accept the risk.

Javert nodded. “I could not stay away, now that I know I am welcome.”

“More than welcome,” Valjean said with a smile, though his heart added other words, words he could not say here on a filthy floor. Words, perhaps that he would never be bold enough to say.

“Though I hope not yet during daylight hours, or I will give myself away.” Javert bent one knee up, resting one forearm upon it. “I will need to regain my self control.” He had dropped his hat beside his leg, and tugged it closer now, as if the key to self control was gathering the pieces of his clothing and seeing whether, like his police uniform, they still fit.

Valjean too straightened up, though their bodies were still close, legs touching. “You?” He shook his head in disbelief at Javert. 

“I don’t want to forget myself if I see you on the street.” Valjean had never noticed how Javert’s smiles lit up his usually somber eyes. Even in the shifting moonlight the smile seemed to warm the air between them as Javert looked at him. “And I could forget myself with you, as I nearly did today in your office.”

It required a last breathless kiss to calm Valjean’s heart.


	4. Chapter 4

The mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer did not need to feign the distraction he planned to use as the reason he left his accounting books in his office at the factory, should anyone have stopped him when he returned at night ostensibly to retrieve them. He could not concentrate on the books during work hours, nor could he eat more than a few bites of his dinner.

All through the day he glanced anxiously outside, both hoping for and fearing the sight of Javert. He was not entirely certain, in the light of day, that Javert would come that evening or even whether Javert would acknowledge all that had transpired on the previous nights.

As darkness fell, he informed his housekeeper that he would be returning to the factory and would be working until quite late. This evening was quieter than the last, with rainclouds obscuring the moon; no children asked him to entertain them, no one sought his advice on keeping safe from predators. He and Javert arrived at almost precisely the same moment before the factory doors.

"Monsieur le maire," Javert greeted him, bowing his head.

"Inspector." A long, charged moment passed. "I'm glad to have encountered you. Since the robbery at the hospital, I had thought to make these doors more secure."

"If you would allow me to examine them?" Javert gestured at the handle, making a small show of inspecting it. With a hand that trembled slightly, Valjean showed him inside, turning and shutting the door behind them.

At that hour, the factory was deserted. Because it was known that Madeleine kept no money in his office and because the beads were not worth enough by themselves for a peddler to risk prison, there had been very few incidents of attempted theft. Still Valjean remained cautious, checking the building as he walked one step ahead of Javert.

Near the back was a large room where supplies were stored, a room with no windows and a door with a lock. After lighting the candles in the small lanterns kept for visits to the dark repository by those in charge of the factory's stock, it was here that he led Javert, speaking all the while of the need to protect the thread on which bracelets and rosaries were strung. The room also contained the fabric from which the factory workers' outfits were made. Silently Valjean set down his lantern, pulled piles of clean straw from the wooden boxes that stood ready to be packed with finished jewelry, and pulled a length of the material over the straw.

If it would scarcely make do as a bed, it would be warmer and softer in the chilly storeroom than the crumbling floor of the building at the wharf. In the light from the lanterns, he could scarcely see more of Javert than outside in the darkness. "Are you too cold?" he whispered.

Bending to one knee, Javert shook his head. "I have stood before cutthroats and thieves and never blinked, yet being here with you like this makes me tremble." He took Valjean's extended hand as he sat on the makeshift cot.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," Valjean said once his breath had returned. Seated this close, he could see Javert's features, the etched lines perhaps not as deep as his own; Javert was younger than himself, but the past had left its mark on him as well.

"I said I would come," said Javert, stretching his legs out beside Valjean's.

And Javert always kept his word, thought Valjean, searching for a way to proceed. He wanted what had come so easily to them the last night and the nights before, the pleasures and the confidences, but had no idea how to regain that furtive camaraderie.

Then, without a word, Javert put his arm around him, pulling him close. Valjean slid his hand over to Javert's lap, where his fingers were covered and held. "Now it is you who are trembling," Javert said, looking down at their hands.

"Because I want to kiss you so badly," he said, though he hadn't been sure what he was going to say before the words came out. This, at least, he knew how to do, though he'd had only one night to learn it. Javert must have wished for the same thing, for his mouth met Valjean's and the kiss was not tentative at all. Valjean let his hands slide up Javert's arms, ending at the back of Javert's neck where he clasped them together to embrace him. At first Javert's arms encircled Valjean's waist, but they soon grew bold, stroking over his back and sliding low to pull their bodies together.

All the while they were kissing, pausing only for long enough to breathe until Javert chuckled unexpectedly and made Valjean open his eyes to be certain the laughter was pleased rather than rueful. "Your tongue will not yield to mine. I had thought one of us might be expected to make the other capitulate."

There was a question in the statement that Valjean had pondered briefly, but having no answers, he had pushed it aside. He had known men at Toulon who paid attention only to men who seemed graceful in their manners and way of speaking -- womanish, some jeered, though Valjean had met women who could carry as much as a man -- while others sought out the strongest figures who might serve as protectors. Was one man predisposed to play the woman's part? He had not tried to imagine what sort of lover he might prefer since he had been quite young, when none of the girls had caught his eye and he had wondered why. The answers had been dangerous, so he had not let himself pursue them.

Now here was Javert, looking at him with curiosity and a sort of defiance. Though not entirely certain how it was accomplished, Valjean knew the vulgar words for what transpired between men and that it was assumed one would submit to the other. Blushing a bit, he admitted, "I have no experience of what is expected. Did you come here hoping that I would surrender?"

It was Javert's turn to look abashed. "I did not dare to hope for anything save that you would keep your word to meet me here. And that you would not be averse to doing what we have done before. You said things to me that I thought perhaps you meant only while lust clouded your judgment."

Valjean let his fingers brush across the warm skin covering Javert's cheekbones. "I may have tried to hide my identity from you, but I haven't spoken falsely to you." If it was not entirely the truth, it was as much as he dared to explain. "I want us to be honest with one another. I want to you to tell me what you desire, and I want to be able to do the same."

"You didn't say 'desire' yesterday." Javert's jaw moved as he swallowed. "You used a different word. You said that I was wrong to think that you would not feel love. Did you mean that?"

It had been easier the first time to take Javert's prick in his mouth than it was to find a reply, yet Valjean knew that he must, not only because Javert's face twitched as though he might try to pull away but because Valjean did not want to turn whatever was happening between them into something base or sordid. "Since you want the truth, I will tell you that I know as little of love as I do of lovemaking. I only know that I want to share them both with you, if two men such as ourselves can guess between us how to go about it."

"Such as ourselves? Do you refer to our age or our inexperience?" asked Javert, covering his hand again. Valjean looked at their hands joined together, remembering the pledges he had made as he concocted his plans for this evening and any other evening they could contrive to be together. There were marks upon his body, some from torture, some from the relentless toil that had seared into his flesh. These he must hide no matter what else transpired between them.

"Both. We cannot change our age, _chasseur_ ," he said, gratified when Javert's eyes warmed at the name. He dragged one fingertip down Javert's palm. "But we can change our inexperience." He lifted Javert's hand and kissed the back of it. "In any way we can find that brings us pleasure."

Javert chuckled again, a warm intimate sound, as though they shared a joke of long standing. "You bring me pleasure, Jean, your hands and your lips. The sound of your voice. Your kisses. The rest will come." They were kissing again, chest to chest, hands still twined as they strained toward one another.

"Let me snuff the lanterns." They were nearly supine upon the blankets, and Javert furrowed his brow, tightening his fingers as if he expected Valjean to try to escape if he rose. "I grew up very poor. There are marks." The words skirted the truth without banishing it, and Javert gave a nod of instant understanding. Untangling their limbs, Valjean moved to blow out one candle, hiding the other lantern in a cleared space behind metal machinery that could not burn. Then the room was in near-total darkness. It gave Valjean a courage he had not had while the lights burned, when the chance of forgetting himself and revealing more than he dared had loomed over him. "You will have to hunt me in the dark," he said, reaching for Javert, who had moved closer as he shifted.

"We are more invisible to each other than we were in the moonlight at the wharf," Javert murmured close to his ear. "Yet you are familiar to me -- how your face feels under my fingers, how your hair smells -- as if we have had a much longer acquaintance."

They were undressing one another, fumbling in the darkness with buttons and boots, kissing all the while. "Perhaps my longing has made it so," said Valjean, tasting the skin over Javert's hip which had been covered by his shirt the night before. He had let Javert tug at his cravat but bent his head to be certain that his shirt would remain over his chest. He did not dare risk letting Javert's fingers find the uneven flesh where his skin had been branded in prison.

"I think it is my longing." Pushing off his trousers, Javert stretched himself out, not so that they faced each other as Valjean had expected but so that their heads were at opposite ends. With his face pressed against Valjean's thigh, Javert muttered, "I have watched you since I arrived here. I tried to remember my place and to obey the law in all things, but I could not stop myself."

"I noticed you looking." In the dark it was easier to say the words that came into his head, to forget the face of the prison guard and remember only the shy smile with which Javert had greeted the mayor. "In truth, I thought you suspected me of some crime."

"I thought your face was familiar, though you told me you would remember if that were so. But I would be lying even to myself if I claimed that was the only reason I watched. There is no virtue in such pretense."

There was little enough of virtue in Valjean's thoughts. In the darkness, he and Javert had stripped each other from the waist down save for the stockings that kept their feet warm and hid the nearly faded evidence of the shackles that had once scarred Valjean's ankles. As his lips brushed over Javert's thigh, he felt Javert do the same thing to him, an intimate mirroring that made him shiver.

Then Javert's mouth was on his cock at the same moment Valjean tasted the hot flesh nudging his own lips and moaned helplessly. He had not envisioned sharing arousal in this way, performing the act at the same time; the angle was awkward at first, but the pleasures it conveyed, matching one another's movements and rhythms, made the delight of it more intense. As he cupped Javert's balls in his hand, feeling Javert do the same to him, he thought once again that he could not believe God found such an act hateful, not when it inspired such feelings of gratitude and love.

It did not seem profane to think of God while performing an act of love, even one that was reviled in some quarters. Instead it seemed right to praise God for giving him a cock and for giving him a mouth to kiss Javert's like this. There was a shift and a gentle brush of fingers behind his balls that did not feel accidental, and Valjean let out a moan that surprised him.

"You like that," Javert said, his voice husky with as much desire as Valjean felt, prick quivering against his mouth.

"I like when you do it," Valjean admitted, burying his face in the thick nest of hair as the stroke repeated. He moaned again, feeling the vibrations of his voice against Javert's prick. "I think I love when you do it." His fingers wended across Javert's thigh, showing him the pleasure of the caress, rewarded by a tremble against him.

"Again," Javert whispered, though there was an air of command and urgency in it. Valjean complied, bending his mouth to the warm pinnacle of flesh and wrapping his lips around it. "Please," Javert added, breath warm on Valjean's skin.

The way his voice quivered sent flames licking into Valjean's belly. His fingers continued their forays over skin and hair and muscle, leaning the places that brought moans and more of those urgent pleadings. When his lips moved along Javert's prick, he found his mouth full at once as Javert thrust inside it. One leg bent at the knee, clear invitation for answering caresses.

Javert was not stingy with his own explorations, kisses fell in places Valjean had barely thought to touch, and he found one hand clenching straw when Javert gently sucked his balls into his mouth. Even had his own mouth not been occupied, he would have been afraid to speak; he did not know whether he might utter a blasphemy or a prayer, nor whether God in His mercy would understand that in this instance they meant the same thing.

Instead he focused on giving Javert pleasure, becoming more daring in how he used his fingers. One fingertip breached Javert almost by accident, for it pressed inside more easily than Valjean would have guessed. Javert sucked in a hissing breath but did not protest, and a moment later, Valjean felt himself being nudged in the same spot in a way that both shamed and enticed him.

He must have tensed, for Javert withdrew the pressure. "You like that much less."

"I'm afraid it is the opposite," Valjean whispered, pressing an apologetic kiss to the side of Javert's prick. Would it ruin the glow of delight that made Valjean forget they lay in total darkness if he tried to explain? "No one has ever touched me there. And --" He had promised honesty. "I had imagined that it was dirty, but it excites me when you do that."

"I had imagined it to be profane," agreed Javert, though Valjean had not removed his own finger and he felt Javert press down upon it as if he would have it reveal even deeper secrets. "That word loses its meaning when I am with you. Many things I thought I knew for certain become confused."

As if he feared he had said too much, Javert redoubled his attentions to Valjean's prick, taking it deeper in his mouth than Valjean would have guessed possible. Then neither of them could speak, for Valjean was groaning around Javert's swollen skin as Javert squeezed the finger that had slid inside him, also deeper than Valjean would have dared were it not for Javert's fearlessness.

"Javert," he gasped, releasing the other man's prick for a breath. "Soon..."

He felt the pressure of Javert's lips and tongue around him at the same moment Javert clenched his finger again -- expressing a wish, perhaps, or a promise -- and he was lost, his hips jerking as his seed gushed into Javert's throat.

He had given the barest of warnings but it seemed none was necessary, for Javert kept his mouth around the convulsing prick and did not flinch as it was flooded by Valjean's offering. He made a gulping sound as Valjean panted, hoping he could pull away if needed, though his prick desired nothing more than to stay inside the most desirable place it had ever been.

"I could not last," he said, trying to catch his breath as quickly as he could to return the pleasure he so earnestly desired to give, feeling that some word was needed.

Javert's mouth released his prick, but didn't move away, rubbing around Valjean's toppling flesh. "I did not ask you to," he said, that husky chuckle warming his voice. Then Valjean felt the warmth tightening around his finger. He could feel arousal thrumming through Javert as surely as his own desire to respond to it.

Moving his lips over the tip of Javert's cock, he found that his lungs would support the demands he suddenly wished to put them to, sealing off his mouth with a generous helping of Javert. Doing this together had been divinely inspired, but Valjean did like having Javert's undivided attention. Javert's breath seemed to rush out of his chest as Valjean's mouth took him in.

Valjean smiled, pressing another finger beside the first, not realizing until he had done it that the yielding flesh would give way to both fingers. Javert bucked against him and the noises he made made Valjean's prick twitch as if aching to spring back to life. Moving fingers and mouth in tandem made it easier to get both deeper until Javert was clutching at him, bucking so hard that Valjean feared the rosary boxes might topple over.

"Jean, _Jean_ ," Javert cried out, hands molding to Valjean's backside as his hips jerked. In an attempt to hold on, Valjean's fingers crooked inside Javert. A wail rent the air, Javert's breath going ragged, the chant of Valjean's name breaking as his release washed over them both.

They lay panting together, unwilling as of yet to break their silent rapport with words. Carefully Valjean withdrew his fingers, marveling at the way Javert had spasmed inside and that he had been able to give him that experience. Seed had spilled out the corner of his own mouth, dripping onto his collar and a bit onto the fabric covering the straw beneath them. When he shifted his hand to wipe it off, Javert caught his wrist.

"I want --" Then Valjean was being kissed, sloppily, since Javert had lunged for him in the dark and was licking him clean as well as kissing, laving over chin and jaw and cheek. Their arms slid around one another. Valjean thought that he could do this all night, lie in the chilly room with Javert's arms keeping him warm, kissing and touching, sliding his fingers through hair that was surprisingly soft. He loved the way Javert moaned into his mouth, he loved the way Javert let his head fall back to expose his throat for more kisses, he loved...

No, this was madness, and he was monstrous, attempting to make love with Javert as if Madeleine were Valjean's true identity, as if all his life before did not need to be hidden. Even if Javert never looked for the brand on Valjean's skin, he was sure to ask questions, innocent queries of the sort that Valjean had wished to ask the Inspector of his life before he ever dreamed that they might know each other so intimately. He would have to lie, to hide his guilt from Javert while at the same time making Javert complicit in it.

He was clinging more tightly than ever to Javert, one arm around his shoulders, the other low around his waist, and as his fingers brushed across a hip, they slipped beneath Javert's shirt. Then Valjean sucked in a breath. So preoccupied had he been with hiding his own scars that he had thought nothing of Javert's prompt agreement that they should snuff the lanterns. Valjean had carried enough of his fellows in prison who had suffered from the lash to recognize by touch alone the scars from a whipping.

His gasp had not escaped Javert's attention, as busy as he had been tasting the skin behind Valjean's ear. "I was born in a prison," Javert muttered. "My childhood was not an easy one."

Though he knew it was dangerous, Valjean turned Javert in his arms, pushing the shirt up as far as he could. "Let me." He kissed the raised skin, letting his tongue move from the smooth lower back to the uneven ridges. He could feel Javert's ragged breathing. Were these scars why Javert had never sought out comfort in another? Or were the interior wounds that could not be seen even worse? Valjean could not imagine how Javert had borne the sight of the men in Toulon if he came from such a place.

Javert was trembling, his face buried in his folded arms. "This is nothing that I expected," he said in a voice that shook. "You are nothing that I expected, Jean."

"You are everything I've dreamed of without knowing myself," Valjean replied, though the admission had already settled into the secret part of his heart where he kept such treasures as the sight of his sister's smile before poverty robbed her of it, the things Toulon had not been able to take from him because he had buried them so deeply. "What did you expect from me, _chasseur_?" he asked, crawling up, seeking the ridges of Javert's spine with his lips. He found an unnaturally puckered patch of skin and rubbed his mouth over it tenderly.

"Release," Javert breathed, shifting his head a bit as Valjean trailed the kisses up his back.

"Have you not found that?" asked Valjean, spreading his fingers out beneath the loosened shirt. There was room for his legs on their makeshift bed and he shifted up, straddling Javert's thighs as he used his mouth in place of his eyes to explore the unknown territory of the man's body.

"Any street whore could give me that, yet I have never sought it out. I have never wanted release at another's hand," murmured Javert. Valjean could tell from the direction of his voice that he had turned his face toward Valjean. "Yet I have wanted you from nearly the first moment."

Valjean bunched the shirt up further, kissing the back of Javert's neck. Here at least the skin was smooth and unmarred, though still damp with perspiration, even in the chilly room. He ran his tongue over it, collecting the sweat and tasting the line where Javert's hair started to thicken. "Why, Inspector, even as far back as our meeting in my office?" he said with a delighted chuckle.

Javert didn't answer at once, though Valjean felt his head lean against the pillow of fingers. "Yes," he said. Instead of elaborating, he added, "I didn't expect passion. I want to believe that the passion lessens the transgression. But I wonder, if I care for you, whether the only truly righteous act would be to release you from this sin and try to love you as a brother, nothing more."

The words stopped Valjean's breath. He choked on air, wrapping his arms around Javert and clutching at him like a drowning man. "I do not wish to be free of you," he managed to whisper, realizing only as he said the words the enormity of their meaning.

"Not even at the cost of our souls?"

"I've told you that I have seen great evils in my life. I have committed sins, knowing that they were sins, without a thought for God or for the men I sinned against." It was as if the weight of his entire past was crushing him, making him bury his face in Javert's hair to disguise the emotion in his voice. "If you find what we have done hateful, then I no longer wish to do it, but I do not believe that God will love us any less if we love each other."

"I don't find it hateful. I doubt that I could find it hateful even if you were not the man you claim to be." Likely Javert meant only that he would forgive Valjean if he discovered that Valjean was not as naive about lovemaking as he had claimed, but the words felt like a reprieve, even a gift. He breathed out shakily, trying not to weep, and felt Javert's arm slide over his own, pressing it to Javert's chest, holding him there. "In these few days you have made me question things that I've always believed. The alteration in myself makes me wonder if I have misunderstood something essential in how a man's character may show itself. I hardly recognize myself, and still I would not go back."

The tears that Valjean had thought he could contain threatened to spill from beneath his lids. "I must be honest with you," he whispered. "I would not have you under false pretenses. I --"

"No." Javert cut him off, first with the sharp word, then twisting around in his arms and silencing him with a kiss. "When we began this, we confessed nothing of ourselves, and here we are." With a jerk of his head, Javert indicated his back. "We both have pasts. Yours will not make me want this any less."

Valjean nodded once, acknowledging the wisdom of this. He felt Javert's finger slide across his chin, then bump against his bottom lip. "I do not wish to be your brother," he said, his mouth still close to Valjean's. "I wish to learn to make love with you and call it making love and not feel shame in naming it." Valjean was holding him tighter, sliding hands over his chest. "And I wish --" The pause made Valjean's hands halt as well, looking up as if he could see what had caused Javert to hesitate.

"Tell me, _mon ange_ ," he prompted, one hand resting on Javert's hip. He had not meant to mutter an endearment but it had slipped out, given flight by the protection of the dark.

"I am no angel. And you will think me a coward, after we have come so far in a single night," admitted Javert, pulling his fingers away and brushing his lips over Valjean's chin.

One of the wayward tears slid over Javert's hand as Valjean shook his head. "You were the one who came around the wall. You have courage beyond measure."

"Will you think me as brave when I say I wish to keep the lanterns dimmed when we meet like this?"

Valjean did not let himself hesitate before he nodded, though the request made him ache with regret anew. He did not wish to have to hide, nor to have Javert hide from him. "It is probably safest that way, should some unexpected interruption occur. But I will tell you now, in case you feel you must hide yourself, no scar or disfiguration could make me wish to stop." How fervently he wished the same could be true for Javert, that the other man was not imagining himself in the act of love with someone younger, handsomer, more experienced.

Javert nodded against him, his head coming to rest beneath Valjean's chin, against his chest. It was less scarred than Valjean's back, yet he knew that if he had removed his shirt, the deep scars left on either side of his neck by irons and the brand in his skin might both be discovered by Javert's fingers, which traveled across his shoulder, down his arm, and back up again. "As I have said, you are nothing that I expected," Javert murmured. His voice was thick with sleep, making Valjean wish that they dared to spend all night there, in one another's arms as they were now. "The effect you have had on me is even more strange. I had never thought that a man could change so much. You must give me time to understand myself."

The words were partly slurred, spoken, perhaps, because Javert was half-drowsing, yet they were nothing Valjean would have expected Javert to say, not even after what they had just shared. It was discomfiting to think that he might have changed Javert. He prayed that it was for the better, as the Bishop of Digne had changed Valjean himself, though that change too had begun with a lie to a policeman. "Perhaps when we know one another intimately, we will wish to see each other plain," he whispered. "Do you want to sleep? I will wake you before too much time has passed."

Valjean stroked through the thick hair above the nape of Javert's neck, feeling Javert sigh. "I dare not. We have already taken too many risks." His voice caught. "Am I right to hope that you will do this again soon?"

Not for the first time, Valjean imagined all he would need to do to bring Javert into his home. It would be a simple thing to dismiss his housekeeper, to claim that they needed to discuss public safety late into the night, to shutter the windows, douse the lights and take Javert to his bed.

It was a risk he desperately wanted to take, but he doubted that Javert would agree, and he did not want to seem dismissive of the danger to them both.

"I will do this tomorrow, if you do not need to be somewhere else," he promised. Again Javert nodded, arms tightening briefly around Valjean's waist.

He wondered whether Javert might consent to ride out with him in daylight, perhaps on a Sunday after church. Not to make love, but to talk someplace where they could not be overheard. To see what sort of companions they might become apart from the passion that overtook them in the dark. To sit beneath the sun and hope it would burn away the shadows cast by their secrets.


	5. Chapter 5

"Good evening, Inspector." Valjean stepped back and allowed Javert to cross his threshold. "Let me take your coat." His fingers trembled as they always did when Javert was this near, but he managed to hang the riding coat beside his own.

"Thank you, Monsieur le maire." Javert's tone was warmer than the words, his gaze even more so as he placed his hat on the chair near the door.

"Come warm yourself by the fire," Valjean invited him, closing the door and setting the locks.

Javert kept his voice low as he spoke. "It is not the fire that will warm me tonight." He looked down the short hallway, nodding. "We are alone?"

"Utterly," Valjean replied. "My housekeeper left two hours ago to keep company with her family." That good woman was most grateful for an evening off once a week to visit her ailing sister. Shortly after she had come into his employ, there had been seemingly incidental visits by every unmarried woman in the region, from merchants' sisters to the daughter of the mayor of a neighboring town. Her matchmaking efforts were now mostly wistful mentions of eligible ladies. She had been happy to leave dinner for him and his expected guest, glad that he would not be alone. "She'll not be back until late in the morning." They would not dare stay together that long, but the time they did have stretched before them, lush and untapped as a summer's day.

"Shall we play cards?" Javert asked, gesturing toward the table laid out in the parlor. Valjean had placed the decks, along with cups and a decanter of cognac. There was still the risk of someone coming to the door in search of the mayor.

"I have another game in mind," said Valjean, sliding his fingers along Javert's sleeve, tracing the outline of the fleur-de-lis stamped on the brass buttons of his uniform tailcoat.

"Will you show me how it is played?" returned Javert, putting one foot on the bottom stair. The second time they had been alone like this, they had made it no further than the foyer, clinging to each other and rubbing together like excited dogs, unable to stop despite the lure of the bed upstairs. And though they had taken time to lie down later in the dark, that was not what he wished this night.

In the months since their encounter in the building by the wharf, they had taken to being seen together after church, strolling down the lanes when the weather was fine, deep in discussion. Sometimes -- the village gossips would say often -- they disagreed on the finer points of mercy. And if the mayor smiled more, then that was all to the good, even if it was the stern inspector who brought that smile to his lips.

"We shall have to take the playing pieces upstairs," Valjean said, tugging on his hand. It had not been easy to convince Javert to come here even in plain daylight, and even harder to convince him they would be safe together in the night. They still met at the factory and their comfort had grown as Valjean found places to hide thicker blankets and an oil lamp tucked inside a broken crate. But it would never be a bed, not even when they let themselves doze there after their passions were spent.

Perhaps because they felt like trespassers at the factory and Javert remained slightly uneasy in the mayor's house, there were words between them that remained unspoken and acts that remained untried. But perhaps there was another reason -- the true name that Valjean could not call himself, the scars he dared not reveal. He had offered, on one other occasion, but Javert had refused to let him speak. It made Valjean think that Javert already suspected, but a suspicion was not proof.

He guessed that Javert might want the excitement of pretending to be with a criminal without a police officer's obligation to turn him in. That made Valjean wistful, just as sharing pleasure in the dark made him wish to show his whole self to Javert, but he had grown accustomed to half-truths. When the deception weighed upon Valjean's heart, he reminded himself that Javert had demanded his silence. It was possible that Javert had some monstrous secret of his own that he was equally loath to share, though Valjean could not guess what it might be.

If only Javert had asked, Valjean would have given his whole self gladly, just as he would have taken Javert in the way he often thought Javert must wish to be taken, so readily did he beg for Valjean's fingers and tongue inside him. But Javert did not ask and Valjean did not suggest it, fearful that Javert might not wish to engage in the ultimate act of love. He doubted that Javert would cling to the notion that they were chaste because they had not committed sodomy, but he had not forgotten that Javert had once equated yielding with submission, and he did not know whether Javert would see Valjean as womanish for succumbing nor whether Javert would feel degraded if he knew Valjean wished to mount him.

They had reached Valjean's spartan bedroom, where he had taken to keeping a pitcher of water in case he should become thirsty and where he had hidden away a spare saddle blanket lest they should leave stains on the bed that might draw the attention of his housekeeper. Not having the courage to seek out any of the books he had heard whispers about in Toulon and among workers who did not know how far their voices carried, he had given some thought -- and some private experimentation -- to determine how lovemaking between men might be comfortably accomplished, concluding that some sort of oil or grease might be necessary, but he did not know why he might plausibly bring either into his bedroom. He hoped that, should the opportunity arrive, spit would suffice.

"Show me the game you had in mind," Javert entreated him, sliding his hands beneath Valjean's waistcoat. He had never tried to remove Valjean's shirt, not even when the lanterns were quenched entirely. "Shall I pursue you like a hunter with a fox? Or shall you pet me and tame me until I want nothing more than to rub myself against you and lick you like a loyal hound?"

"I would never wish to tame you," Valjean said, pressing their hips together beside the bed. "Not entirely. Nor would I ever wish to have you catch me so that I could not get away to be chased again." His own hands wound around Javert's shoulders, pushing his fingers into the hair at the back of Javert's neck. It was stiff and spiky here and yet Valjean loved touching it, playing with it, both before they made love and after. They kissed again, letting their lips linger together, playing their own sort of game as they pressed and licked and drew apart.

"You could never tame my passion for you, Jean," admitted Javert, trailing his fingers up the buttons of Valjean's waistcoat, pulling them open one by one.

That elicited a growl from Valjean's lips, one he had not intended to make, but the heat licked inside him. He pushed playfully against Javert, only to send him sprawling back onto the bed, though Valjean had not used much force. One of Javert's legs came up and Valjean tugged at the high boot, pulling it off, then doing the same with the other as Javert rubbed his stocking-clad foot against the still-standing Valjean. "I do love rousing you." His whole body beckoned and Valjean had no wish to refuse. Then Javert rolled over, onto his belly, though still dressed, and Valjean could resist no longer. Quickly he doused the lights, relying on the single candle on the mantel, whose light gave them direction in the room but did not reach as far as the bed.

"How can we play this game of yours with all our clothes on?" Javert asked as Valjean straddled his legs. He was hard inside his trousers and pressed the evidence of it against Javert's backside. Spreading his fingers to brace himself, Valjean leaned forward, kissing the scant open space between where the stiff shirt began and the hair began to thicken on the back of his neck.

"We don't need them all," explained Valjean, happy to make up the rules as they went along. "This, for example, is completely unnecessary. Lift up for me." Javert did as requested and let Valjean peel his vest away from his shoulders. The shirt beneath flowed unbound around his hips. He gave Javert's backside a gentle swat. "These too bind up your finest playing pieces," he said, urging with his hands so that he could peel the trousers away, leaving the stockings in place. He let his hands wander over Javert's ankles, tracing the calves and cupping the backs of his knees.

With admirable premonition, Javert spread his legs out upon the bed as Valjean straddled his thighs. He had let his own trousers fall, freeing his cock, which had been hard since before they had climbed the stairs, though at his age it did not suffer from the urgency of youth, demanding satisfaction only to wane and wax again. Bending, he let his hands continue their path up Javert's muscular thighs, not marked as were his lower back and buttocks from youthful cruelties that Javert had not described. Valjean would have done what he could to assuage that long-ago pain, but he did not dare ask questions that might invite the same curiosity about his own scars.

Javert's hips lifted off the bed as Valjean's fingers reached the curves at the tops of his thighs. It was an invitation, and Valjean smiled as he let his hands slide around to feel the rigid shaft prodding out beneath Javert's belly. Lowering his head, he kissed first one buttock, then the other, and when Javert moaned his approval, he let his tongue slide down the cleft between them.

" _Nom de Dieu_!" gasped Javert, his hips bucking, pushing his cock through Valjean's fingers. "This is my favorite game!"

"Mmmhmm," purred Valjean, rubbing the hidden entrance to Javert's body with his fingers before letting his mouth descend. He loved the sound of Javert's muttered oaths and curses when he touched him here; he was certain that the God who designed men's bodies to experience pleasures like this would forgive such irreverence that was, in fact, a prayer of thanks.

Javert rocked on elbows and knees, head lowered, making sounds that vibrated in Valjean's loins. "Are you certain you don't wish to tame me?" he muttered.

What was Javert asking of him? Valjean's breath caught as he guessed, though he was terrified of giving a reply that would offend Javert. "If you wished," he whispered, letting his lips brush the puckered skin, "I would claim you here in my bed until I had satisfied all your desires. But I would not want you to think I expected compliance or obedience, _chasseur_."

"Good, because I may wish to tame you too, someday, _mon grand_ , if you will allow it. But now I wish to be claimed."

Valjean bent his head, groaning as his fingers trailed down the back of Javert's thigh. "I have claimed nearly every part of you with my mouth and my fingers," he said, his voice shaking. "And you have done the same to me."

"And if I desire more?" said Javert, shifting beneath his hands. "I don't jest. This is no game."

"I can deny you nothing, though I know little of that sort of claiming." Though his thoughts had wandered that path, desire was not the same thing as knowing, something they both understood.

"What did you know of kissing before the first time?" countered Javert. "No more than I. Or of the tasting of seed or --" He broke off as Valjean wiggled up beside him in the bed, reaching to stroke his cheek as Javert turned, leaning into Valjean's fingers. He always trimmed his whiskers before they met, leaving the skin above smooth and supple. They kissed again, and though they had much practice in this now, the delight of it was always as keen as that first fumbling attempt. "We will learn this too. If not the first time, then we will try again until we have mastered it."

"Do you have any notion of how we might proceed?" When Javert raised an inquiring brow, Valjean swallowed and continued. "I confess that I have tried to imagine it." He took Javert's knowing smile as encouragement. "I fear that my hands and tongue will not be sufficient to prepare you."

Javert was still smiling in a way that made Valjean blush. "You know that I was a prison guard. I tried to keep myself chaste in thought as well as in body, then, but I had the impression that determined men could manage with very little preparation."

"Manage, perhaps, but men who suffer in prison may be accustomed to discomforts that we can scarcely imagine in a comfortable bed." Valjean certainly could not explain that after spending nearly half his life sleeping in a prison bunk, he still had trouble sometimes finding rest in a bed with blankets and pillows even such as those in his own unadorned room. "I do not wish merely to make it tolerable. I want us both to know why men would risk so much and write such praises for the glories of the flesh."

The way Javert was gazing at him stirred Valjean so deeply that he could not doubt how the spirit and body could be joined in passion. "When you speak to me so, I have little need to wonder," Javert murmured in agreement, leaning in for another kiss. "You have made me believe that this is no base urge we share. Even if you cause me pain, I'll know that we make love together, and it will make me as strange to myself as everything we have done, and I will not want to go back to the way I was."

"Javert," interrupted Valjean urgently, his heart heavy, yet knowing that he would not forgive himself if he did not speak. " _Chasseur_. Before we do this, before I ask you to trust me and give yourself to me, let me be entirely truthful with you. I am not the --"

"No." Javert spoke quietly, and placed a single finger on his lips, but Valjean could not disobey the force of the command. "I know the man you are. I know what is in your soul, Jean. Don't tell me anything that would require me to choose between doing my unhappy duty or violating my oath. I am not required to act on anything I could not prove unless I had evidence or a confession."

For a moment Valjean was utterly certain that Javert knew everything -- that Javert had known from the time he arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer that the mayor was a convict who had broken his parole. But that was madness. Javert would have sought proof and then denounced him. Even if Javert had indulged himself in the pleasure they had shared at the docks, he could not have changed so much in so short a time. He would have sought opportunities to gather evidence. That was Javert, who would never be susceptible to bribery or blackmail.

Instead Javert had always encouraged Madeleine to protect his secrets, to keep himself covered, to hold back his confessions. Why would the Inspector do that for a convict? No, there must have been some dark secret of his own to which Javert was loath to confess in turn. Javert could not have guessed whose bed he shared, and Valjean could not tell him.

Javert must have sensed Valjean's turmoil, for he kissed him again, lying back and pulling Valjean with him. "I ask nothing of you but that you claim me as you say you wish. I shall hold you blameless for what you have not said." His fingers pushed into Valjean's hair, brushing along his neck. Valjean's erection had withered in the terror of attempting to make his confession and he knew that, this close, Javert could not help but notice.

"When I was new to my post in that terrible prison," Javert said, his voice low and quiet, "one of the first punishments I saw was the whipping of a man for stealing a bit of candle. I didn't understand why such a crime warranted the harshest punishment." He cleared his throat. "There was nothing in the laws of the prison to explain it, and the other guards would not speak of it." He pulled back again so that he could see Valjean's face. "A simple tallow candle, one that softens when heated."

Delight bubbled up in Valjean's chest. "But men will risk much for glory," he replied, watching the color rising on Javert's cheeks.

He felt a hand sliding away from his hip and cupping his nearly recumbent sex. "It is glorious even like this," said Javert, moving his thumb through the curls at the base.

Valjean pressed his lips together. "And I thought you were an honest man."

Javert's head disappeared beneath the blanket. "You talk too much," he chided. A pair of stockinged feet hit the pillow beside Valjean's head and one knee bent up. "Make better use of your mouth," he coaxed, though Valjean was already bending toward the apex of his thighs. "Only do not let me finish like this," Javert cautioned before busying his own mouth again.

It took very little of this skill they had learned together to rise from _petit_ to _grand_. In truth, excitement had begun building with words before deeds -- such simple words as "candle" and "tallow." Valjean obeyed his instructions. He knew a finger down the seam of Javert's balls would bring pleasure, but one at the entrance between his buttocks would be too much and one or both of them would spend too quickly even at their relatively advanced ages.

"Enough," Javert uttered. "Or I will finish before we begin."

"Shall I fetch the candle?" asked Valjean. He could not think of the light as his enemy this night, not only because it would provide the tallow, but because he did not want to fumble in darkness and risk hurting Javert. After the things the Inspector had said, Valjean also suspected that no questions would be asked even if Javert caught sight of his scars. "You must tell me what to do."

"I am only guessing," said Javert, his tone grave but his features animated with some amusement Valjean had not seen before. "But I believe the tallow must be warm enough to melt, yet not so hot that your fingers or my skin will scald."

"I wish to cause you no pain," Valjean assured him, and it was easy enough to obey that wish when only his fingers were engaged. Even in the dim room, with Javert on his back, his head slightly raised by a pillow, Valjean could see every look of surprise and pleasure that crossed his face. Valjean had touched Javert like this with his fingers on previous occasions, learning that the pleasure of such penetration outweighed any discomfort, that Javert would moan and try to hold his thighs apart to bring the welcome intrusion deeper. But Valjean's cock was much larger than his fingers -- like the muscles of his arms and chest, it had on occasion been a source of guffaws by men who had caught a glimpse of it when he shifted his prison rags or pissed in front of them -- and in the act itself he could not make himself careful enough.

He waited until Javert very nearly begged him to proceed, and he tried to keep his weight from crushing Javert beneath him, but the first push into the wonder that was Javert's body frenzied him. Even after experiencing the delight of Javert's mouth sucking him, he had not imagined that such intense pleasure could exist, not only from the tightness of the narrow entrance stretched around his cock but from knowing that the heat enclosing him came from Javert, making love to Javert, who made a noise that did not sound like the same bliss. Valjean tried to make himself withdraw, but in this instance his strength failed him; his hips would not obey. Instead he tried to slow their thrusting, but Javert's head thrashed against the bed as he shook it: "In the name of God, keep moving!"

"I'm hurting you --"

"I haven't asked you to stop." Javert's legs shifted, changing the angle, compressing Valjean's cock inside him so that he could do no more than cry out and keep moving though he knew that it was too fast, that he would be past the peak before he had even put a hand on Javert. He fumbled between them, but it was hopeless, the sensations were too new and too overwhelming, and one glance at Javert's expression, which while not transported by pleasure was as unreserved and moved as Valjean had ever seen, was enough to fray what was left of Valjean's crumbling control. He shoved himself in deep and cried out as he lost all sense of anything but the rapture of spilling himself inside Javert.

When he could breathe, when he could see again, he found Javert gazing at him in wonder and a kind of amusement. "I had not guessed that I could make you scream like that."

"I'm sorry, I tried to make myself stop, I didn't know that it would make me so wild --" Valjean silenced himself, swallowing. He wondered what he had shouted to make Javert smile so. He had not felt so much like an animal since shortly after he left Toulon, yet at the same time this was nothing like that, for Javert was looking at him with affection in his eyes and a grin curving his mouth.

"Don't apologize. I never expected that we would learn all there was to know about this on the first attempt." Did Javert always look so smug when he brought Valjean to climax? Valjean thanked God for the candle, for the shirt that covered the worst of his scars, for the fact that it seemed he had not put Javert off the act despite his own ineptitude. He withdrew his softening prick, noting the twinge of discomfort that made Javert press his eyes shut, though Javert's cock had remained erect throughout and now he smiled once more. "We will have to try again tomorrow, if you are willing."

"You would let me?" Again Javert looked as if he might laugh. Valjean gave him a breathless kiss. "I would be more than willing. I would do anything you wished. I will steal olive oil from the kitchen or perhaps the machine oil we use at the factory if you think it would serve..."

"Steal nothing, or I will have to arrest you, Jean." A soft chuckle broke up Javert's last words -- a chuckle, that was all, but Valjean found himself staring.

"What did you say?"

"I said I will have to arrest you if you steal. Though what you take from your own kitchen and your own factory is no concern of the police, Monsieur." Again Javert chortled, though Valjean barely heard the words. He had been certain that Javert had called him "Valjean."

Perhaps he had deprived himself of too much breath in the act of love, or perhaps his mind had tricked him, wracked by guilt. He could not believe that God would punish him for this single transgression, not when it had filled him with such love for Javert that he believed he had called out the words. "Now let me," he said, swallowing, reaching for Javert, finding the hot stiff cock eager to push into his hand.

It was a rare treat to be able to watch Javert's face, to see the fine tremor that went through his lips, the way his chin lifted as his head tilted back as the breaths became deeper, then quicker and faster as Valjean sped up his hand. It even gave his prick a twitch to see his own fingers full of Javert's prick, to tease the tip with his thumb and collect the essence there that he tasted without a thought.

"Do that again," Javert moaned, eyes full of that mysterious light their lovemaking had put there. Valjean obeyed, only more slowly this time, bending slowly to swirl his tongue around the head before bisecting the tip.

"You like this?" he teased, kissing the yielding flesh that topped the hard pinnacle. Javert's hips bucked, staying off the mattress for several long moments while a noise exhaled out of him that was pleasure made audible. Valjean pushed him down with one hand to his hip, lowering his mouth onto the pulsing cock.

"You know I do, you know I --" Whatever he was about to say became a moan as Valjean's wet finger pressed into the still loosened flesh that had just welcomed his cock. "Push it in, push it in or I shall go mad," commanded Javert, though his voice was quavering.

"You are hunting, _mon chasseur_ , but what you are seeking is not so far out of reach," encouraged Valjean, doing as bidden, tracing the path his prick had forged, finding the spot he knew lay deep inside. "Come find it with me," he added before he allowed himself to speak no more.

He was not silent long. He could feel the last edges of Javert's control breaking away, shattering like colored glass. "Jean, _cher_ Jean!" cried out Javert, flooding Valjean's mouth with seed. Valjean kept his mouth in place until the tender convulsions slowed.

"You will stay?" he asked, resting his cheek against Javert's thigh as Javert caught his breath. "I have food, if you're hungry. Or we can rest awhile and eat it later."

"Later, then." Javert's fingers slid through his hair. "Though perhaps we should clean ourselves before we leave evidence of our activities."

They separated for long enough for Valjean to fill the basin he kept in the antechamber so that they could use their handkerchiefs to wash off. The anxious looks Valjean turned on Javert lessened as he realized that he had not caused his lover any significant pain. He could never get enough of looking at Javert, particularly not when they returned to the warmth of the bed, though Javert lay on his back with his eyes unfocused until Valjean stroked his cheek, raising an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

"I had thought I might feel changed, afterward," said Javert, flushing a bit.

"Changed in what way?" The words were unsettling, though Javert turned to press his cheek against Valjean's fingers. "Are you disappointed?"

There was something sweet and wistful in Javert's smile as he brushed his hand over Valjean's arm. "I am not disappointed. I had always believed that what we just did was a great sin. It was what I was taught, and I knew too little of God's ways to question what I was taught."

Guilt stirred in Valjean's chest once more. "I don't question whether it is a sin. The Bible tells me that it is. But the Bible also tells me that our sins will be forgiven if we turn to God."

"Since the first night I met you at the wharf, my thoughts have turned to God more than they ever did before. That is one change of many. I fear that God and I have rarely understood one another." Javert smiled mirthlessly. "I know what the law demands of me. I have never known what God demands."

"I was told by a man who was surely a saint that I must put aside hatred. The rest followed from there." Pulling Javert's fingers to his mouth, Valjean kissed the knuckles. "Once I understood that what God required of me most was to go forth in love, He changed me in every way."

Javert's gaze was solemn. "Even now, I have no idea what God requires of me. If I change, it will be because of you."

"That is a great power, to change a man," Valjean replied, humbled. "I am not God, nor holy as the man of the cloth who showed God's love to me."

Turning to his side, Javert pressed closer, one leg resting on top of Valjean's. "That I lie here with you proves that I am already changed. It was not God but you who made that happen."

Brow furrowed, Valjean said, "But you just said you did not feel changed by what we did tonight." Even such a short time after, his prick stirred at the recently-made memory.

Javert slid his fingers beneath the lowermost edge of Valjean's long shirt, hand resting upon his hip. There were scars inches from his fingertips, but he did not explore further. "It was not tonight that changed me. It was loving you that did that, and I loved you before tonight, or I would not have wished so much to give myself to you." He pushed his face against Valjean's chest as though he wished to hide it, as if those words could provoke any reaction other than joy.

"You --" Valjean closed his mouth. "You aren't saying this because I cried out in my passion?"

Shaking his head against Valjean's shoulder, Javert moved his fingers over the shirt until his hand rested on Valjean's chest just over his heart. "I say it because I see that you love me, even when you don't speak of God's love or God's mercy. You touch me tenderly, you worry for my pain. You cry out when I give you pleasure." He turned his face up at last. "I say it because it's true, and that has changed me beyond anything God has ever shown me."

Valjean thought to say that he could not have created such a miracle alone, that it must indeed have been God's will. But it was not God's love that Javert sought. It was his, and he gave it with all his heart, though he nearly wept with happiness before he could say the words.


	6. Chapter 6

"Monsieur le maire! Monsieur le maire!"

The shouts made Javert pause in the recounting of how it had taken two policemen to coax a drunken young man from the roof where he had improbably climbed to serenade an entirely disinterested sweetheart. He looked very official in his uniform, standing straight in the boots Valjean had watched him polish that morning when he had finally let Javert out of bed, still flushed and smiling from making love. Despite Javert's proper appearance, his soft laughter when he said the word "sweetheart" was for Valjean alone.

It was not unusual for them to have tea together in Valjean's office while the Inspector made his reports to the mayor. No one appeared to think anything of it when Javert came to the factory, nor when Monsieur Madeleine and the head of his town's police force were seen walking together to the bakery or the church. It meant that the two were in common cause, that Montreuil-sur-Mer was safe. They were greeted with respect by the townsfolk, and what crime existed seemed to shrink further into the shadows, rarely disturbing the peace. The men of the wharf and the women of the pier went about their business quietly, so Javert had no cause to disturb them.

The cries of alarm that shattered the peace now came not from the factory, but from the street outside. Exchanging a worried glance with Javert, Valjean followed the sounds of the commotion with Javert close behind. It did not take long to see what had happened, that old Fauchelevent had slipped in the mud beneath his cart and that the panicked people had shouted for help rather than organizing themselves to free him. Valjean called out suggestions, offering money for a strong man to assist, but they were all afraid of the crushing weight.

"I have never known but one man capable of doing what you ask," Javert said with quiet vehemence. "He was a convict in the galleys at Toulon. You can't expect any of these men to be capable of such a feat of strength."

Valjean whirled to stare at him. Was it a warning? He watched Javert turn away from him deliberately, stepping aside to prevent the children from racing forward to see what had happened. Fauchelevent cried out in agony.

There was no time, Valjean realized; he had to lift the cart immediately or the old man would die. Bracing himself, he pushed up as hard as he could, trying not to remember being forced to turn a capstan until he was too tired to stand, trying not to recall the faces and voices of the guards who had watched pitilessly. He felt the cart inch upward as he cried for assistance and heard shouts of triumph as the old man was pulled to safety.

When he let the cart drop, panting, waiting for his vision to clear, the first thing he saw plainly was Javert. The Inspector's face looked as if he had seen a ghost, though his stance was as rigid and unyielding as that of a Toulon guard. What had he seen, looking at Valjean straining beneath the weight of the cart? Had he recognized the man who had shared pleasure with him that morning or only a convict from the galleys whose identity could no longer be disguised?

Valjean could not do as he wished and fling himself into Javert's arms until Javert the tender lover returned. This Javert was gruffly ordering two men to carry Fauchelevent to the infirmary. Then one of the shopkeepers' wives wrapped Valjean in a shawl, urging him out of the street and into the bakery, where one of the boys brought him a soft chair. As the kindly lady wiped his brow, he could still see Javert through the windowpane, directing his men to disperse the crowd and clean up the mess of the cart.

When he could no longer see Javert, he could finally focus on the woman's chatter, hearing how all who had seen him were exclaiming over his strength. He waved the baker's wife's ministrations away and mustered a consoling smile. "Please, will you find out for me how Monsieur Fauchelevent fares?"

"I will send my boy to the sisters," she said, patting his shoulder, fishing something out of her apron pocket and closing Valjean's fingers around it. It was a rosary. Nodding his thanks, he made his prayers, though he did not change the litany to add any of the things weighing down his heart. His breath was strong again by the time he was done, and his chest no longer constricted from the efforts of his labors.

He pulled off the shawl, thanking his hostess, who had returned to offer him warm bread. "I should go see old Fauchelevent for myself," he said, feeling better once he was on his feet. After returning her rosary, he went outside, where the street was nearly clear, just a few men clustered on the corner gesturing to one another. Surely by nightfall every one of them would swear that he had been there to see the mayor's nearly inhuman feat. There were no policemen in the street at all. Javert had not even waited to see if he was all right.

What he had not expected were the shouts of congratulations when he entered the factory. The foreman came over to shake his hand. Even the girls on the shift made little nervous curtsies as he went up to the offices. Both his clerks swarmed around him, patting him on the shoulder; the older rubbed his eyes, murmuring, "Surely a miracle, Monsieur le maire. Surely God granted you a miracle."

He was just about to enter his office when the clerk added, "The Inspector is waiting for you, sir. He insisted on waiting."

All at once Valjean wished that God would grant him not one miracle today, but two. Straightening his shoulders, he walked through the door and shut it behind him. "Inspector," he said as calmly as possible.

"Monsieur le maire." Javert nodded, not quite meeting his eyes. "You are the talk of all the town, for a man your age to be as strong as you are."

"You better than anyone know the strength of my arms." Valjean did not dare say more. Silently he implored Javert to look at him.

At last, Javert did. "You are recovered from your efforts?" he asked gruffly. "I have come to tell you that the cart is damaged beyond repair and the horse had to be put down. The old man will have no way to make his living."

"I shall purchase the horse and cart from him, and find him another situation." The reply was automatic. Javert looked as if he could barely contain his horror as he regarded Valjean, and Valjean could only guess that it was because he had confirmed the very thing Javert must have suspected yet been able to deny to himself until now. "Will you come to the infirmary with me to see how Fauchelevent fares?"

"I will visit the infirmary, Monsieur. Your clothes are torn and filthy. You should return home before you catch cold." There was a brief hesitation in Javert's clipped speech. "If you wish, I will report to you there on the man's condition."

Though his knees had not failed him when he lifted the cart, Valjean found he needed the support of his desk now as he nodded. "Yes. I would appreciate that, Inspector."

When he left the factory, Valjean found himself feted just as he had been upon his arrival. One of the men insisted on walking him home, chatting the entire time about how Madeleine's strength had surely come from God and that the miracle was a sign by which the entire town would benefit. It took effort not to outpace the man, to flee from him, to race home, but Valjean forced himself to smile and agree that certainly only God could have given him such strength.

After he washed and gave his dirty clothes to his clucking housekeeper, telling her that the Inspector would be joining him for dinner, he could do nothing but wait. His thoughts were too agitated for prayer. When at last the knock arrived, he warned the housekeeper that he and Javert had important matters to discuss and were not to be disturbed under any circumstances, not even to clear the plates, which could sit till morning. Somehow even she had learned of his feat with the cart and offered a rather awed curtsy as she scurried to her room.

Javert was still in his uniform and looked for all the world as if he had merely come to make a report, as was his duty. He did not smile, and they spoke little as they began to eat. Desperately, Valjean cast about for something to say.

"You never told me what happened to the drunken young man and his sweetheart."

"My men persuaded him to come down. The woman refused to speak to him. Such is the reward for his recklessness."

"You have no sympathy for his youth? Or the fact that he was in love?"

Javert's face was stone. "Love is not an excuse for such flagrant disregard for the rules of conduct. Perhaps the woman had the wisdom to know that she would fare better with a man who would not betray the law."

Valjean let his spoon drop into his bowl. As it was, he had scarcely eaten a bite. "Javert."

"Not everyone is impressed by men who perform extravagant acts to draw attention to themselves."

"You are angry that I saved an old man from being crushed by his cart?" demanded Valjean.

"You could have been killed just as surely! Or you could have drawn the attention of others who did not believe your strength to be a gift from God, but from some other place. On a day not so happy as this one, they will wonder about where your terrible strength comes from." Javert, too, had set down his spoon. "There will be gossip. Someone may ask questions."

"There is no one besides you who would know what to ask." How Valjean wished he had forced Javert to let him confess at an earlier time, not like this. He rose to his feet, moving around the table as he spoke. "Even if they overheard you today, they would not believe it. A convict from the galleys of Toulon? When I was --"

"Be silent!" roared Javert, shoving back his chair so that he too could stand up. He had never spoken so to Valjean...no, he had never spoken so to Madeleine. He had always spoken so to Valjean. This, then, was the same man Javert had been at Toulon, just as Valjean was the same man from that place, and the past had caught up with them both. Javert looked both dangerous and frightened as he stepped around the table. "In Montreuil, you are a man without a past. I have no proof of wrongdoing. No one would expect me to denounce you without proof. But if you expose yourself as one who has --" Javert gestured wildly. "-- one who has done something deserving of the attention of the police, I will have no choice."

They had reached each other on the far side of the table. Valjean did not dare to touch Javert now. Instead he slid to his knees, his shoulders shaking. "You always knew, didn't you? Just as you knew whom you met at the wharf." He wanted Javert to tell him, too, that whatever untruths he might have spoken, Javert knew that Valjean had never lied when he confessed his love. But even more than he feared being arrested, he was afraid that Javert might say it never could have been love.

"Ask no more of me." The conflict was plain in Javert's face. Closing his eyes, he moved his lips. Valjean thought that he must be praying. Finally, without lifting his eyelids, Javert nodded. "I suspected you from the beginning. When you kept me at a distance, that made me more certain. I believed that everything you did was meant only to disguise what you were."

"I have never told you any untruth that I haven't allowed everyone else to believe as well. And you have told me over and over not to speak of my past. I would never ask you to break faith with your honor, though the things we honor may not always coincide." His eyes pleaded where his words could not.

"They did once." Javert's eyes opened. His gaze hadn't softened. "I place a high value on my honor as a policeman, and..." Something flashed over his features that might have transformed his expression, had he but let it. "And as a man."

"Nothing has changed about the ways we honor each other," said Valjean, though he feared that was what he wished more than what he saw in Javert's eyes now. He thought that it might have been less difficult for Javert knowingly to make love with a man who might be a convict than not to denounce a man he was certain had broken the law.

"If you honor anything that I believe in, you will not reveal yourself -- to anyone," ground out Javert as his gaze slid toward the door. "If you speak further, I must do my duty." Valjean knew, as surely as he had known that Fauchelevent would die if he didn't intercede, that if Javert left the room with so many recriminations between them, they would never meet as friends -- or anything more -- again.

"You said to ask no more of you, m--" Valjean changed the endearment that until a few hours ago had come so naturally to his lips, _mon chasseur_ , to simply, "my friend. But I would ask that you search your heart and see if there is any forgiveness in it."

"It is not my place to forgive. It is my place to uphold the law." To Valjean's astonishment, Javert barked a laugh, fingers clutching at the table. "You do not make it easy. I ask you to keep silent, to disguise the signs that might result in questions, not only from myself but from others. But you do things that I will never understand. Like today. You didn't hide your strength when you should have, though gossip may spread from town to town and bring attention to you. Do you believe that you deserve to be caught?"

"That's for God to decide. I only believe that I must do what I know God would have me do, and that you deserve to be loved by someone who will be honest with you. Every day I must choose between lying about who I am and disobeying your demand that I never speak of the past. You must believe me, Javert -- in spite of the ways I may have tried to deceive you, I have only spoken the truth when I said I loved you."

"Do you comprehend what you ask of me?" Valjean had bowed his head, afraid to look into Javert's eyes and see doubt; now a hand moved forward where he could see it, fingers outstretched to take his own. Javert pulled Valjean to his feet, though his knees protested; he felt old, too old for the work of the galleys, too old to lose what scant happiness he had found. He forced himself to meet Javert's gaze as Javert spoke. "If you speak the truth, it means that you are not the man I thought you were, that first day in your office. It means that you have become honest despite knowing that as a policeman I would do whatever was required, even denouncing you. It may mean that any man could change and I have been wrong to doubt it all these years."

Lines etched Javert's face as if the struggle with this idea wounded him. Too well Valjean remembered how painful it had been to accept what the Bishop had offered him -- to weep for the first time in nineteen years -- yet he was fiercely glad to know that Javert's heart was not stone, that there might yet be room for mercy. "I have changed," he whispered, taking a step closer to Javert. "I am not the man I was. I remind myself of that every time I must speak a false name or evade a question. I am not a lawless beast. I would rather be honest with you in all things and face the consequences than have you doubt yourself because of me."

Javert studied Valjean's face as if searching for proof of this. He must have found something that pleased him, for he smiled, though the smile, too, was pained. "If you must force me to accept that a man can change so much, could you at least do us both the favor of not requiring that I arrest you?" he asked plaintively.

"I'll try." The smile was a reprieve, and Valjean's breath broke in a sob as he stepped forward, clutching Javert in his arms. For several minutes they simply held each other, catching their breath, reacquainting themselves with the comfort of loving and being loved.

"Your housekeeper..." began Javert gruffly.

"...has been instructed not to interrupt us unless the house is on fire. Though she washes my dirty shirts, I think she may now be a bit in awe of me. It seems that someone told her I performed a feat of unnatural strength." It felt so good to laugh together. "So please, if you have nowhere you must be, come to my chamber, and if she sees us together in the morning, I shall tell her I became ill from my efforts and required you to nurse me."

Javert did not argue, following Valjean silently through the house to his room, where he lit the candles on the ugly mahogany desk. When Javert tilted his head as if to ask a question, Valjean said, "Let us have no darkness between us now."

Though he looked uneasy, Javert nodded. It was not until they had begun to undress one another that Valjean remembered he was not the only one with hidden scars, and that while his own might be more ruinous if seen -- the marks on his wrists and his ankles could not plausibly be explained as the result of anything but chains and manacles, though he had concocted an elaborate story about having been a prisoner of the Austrians in case someone should expose them -- Javert's nonetheless spoke of a sad and painful youth. When Valjean traced a dark furrow that he thought must have been left by a whip, Javert shuddered.

"I hope it was a stranger's hand and not one whom you trusted who did this to you."

"I have never trusted anyone. My mother couldn't keep me safe. I learned at a young age that the world is a pitiless place. The law is the only thing that protects us."

"My mother died when I was young, but she loved me, and my sister took me in when she was gone." Never before had Valjean felt himself so fortunate in the circumstances of his childhood, as impoverished as it had been. He had behaved churlishly toward his sister and resented how hard he had had to work; now he would give up anything precious, even the candlesticks, to know what had become of her. "I do not disagree with you about the law. I only know that there must be mercy, also."

"Until you found me at the wharf, I never had reason to believe that God was any more merciful than the worst of men." Javert trembled under his touch as Valjean guided him to the bed. "I didn't understand why you would show me kindness. I would not have guessed that a sin could bring me closer to God."

Though he had left the brand in his skin covered, Valjean could feel Javert's eyes on him, taking in the evidence of the past of which they would not speak. There was neither revulsion nor pity in Javert's gaze, only the same frank appraisal that had warmed Valjean on the occasions when he had caught Javert looking at him these past weeks. His cheeks flushed as he said, "I long to be closer to God and closer to you. So let us speak no more of sin. Come make love to me."

Javert's eyes widened. "You want me to...?"

"Yes. If you will have me that way, I want to be yours, now. I want you inside me." He could see that he had surprised Javert, who seemed to have a different suggestion every night they were together for a position in which they might unite themselves, yet which had all culminated with Valjean's cock buried in the heat of Javert's body. He had wondered what it would be like to reverse their positions, but he had not suggested it before, not when Javert seemed so delighted and he was himself so gratified by their lovemaking. Yet he had also been aware that he felt vulnerable when he imagined himself in such a position, with so much of himself exposed. Perhaps he had needed to be certain that Javert knew who shared his bed and did not recoil.

Valjean knelt beside the bed and tugged at Javert's boots, standing them beside his own shoes, peeling the stockings away. Unlike his own, Javert's ankles were unmarred. "I do wish it, Jean," he said as Valjean crawled between his knees. "But I don't wish to hurt --"

Smiling, Valjean reached up, placing a finger over Javert's lips. "Are you saying your cock is so much larger than mine that we cannot accommodate it even with the oil?"

That set Javert's eyes dancing, something his men might have been surprised to see, the amusement and the adoration shining from them. "Very well, but I want to see more of you as well."

They had always left some clothing on even in the dark, their shirts, which hung to their hips, and stockings, sometimes more when their passions flared before they could undress. Nodding, Valjean dropped his shirt and stockings over the side of the bed. He left his cravat loosely around his neck, covering part of his chest, for the brand in his skin spoke the thing Javert had asked him not to say as clearly as any words.

Javert reached out, stroking his wrists, tracing marks of roughly healed flesh there. Valjean lifted his chin, letting the roving fingers explore the way he had touched Javert's scars. "You will make love to all of me, my past and my present, _bien-aimé,_ ," he said, surging up between Javert's spread knees and joining their mouths together in a kiss.

He knew better than to speak of the future; neither of them could promise such things. "If you are certain," murmured Javert. "I don't need this to thank God for what we have found together." His fingertips slid down Valjean's cheek. They fell back on the bed, chests pressing close, legs tangling as they kissed.

"I'm certain, completely certain," gasped Valjean, already breathless from the passion that grew so easily between them and the promise of the delight he had never known Javert wished to share. Javert's hand stroked over his hip, urging him back. They would have to be quiet; the housekeeper slept downstairs near the kitchens, but they would give her no cause to investigate.

"Your prick is certain," noted Javert, bending to rub his cheek against Valjean's upraised shaft. Valjean loved the softness of his skin, then the gentle rasp of his beard when he moved his face in circles around his prick before kissing the tip of it.

"My prick is always certain where you're concerned," Valjean moaned, not wasting the lights they'd left burning, watching Javert's attentions to his erection. "Not too much of that, please, or it will become too impatient to wait for what we want."

"One would not expect such urgency from a man your age." From Javert's smile, Valjean could see that neither his years nor his impetuousness displeased the younger man. "May I?" Javert gestured at the chest that held the oil and stable blanket Valjean had hidden inside. They both moved to cover the bed. Then Valjean lay back, spreading his legs and bending up his knees as he had often felt Javert do around him, though they had never watched one another like this. He felt Javert's eyes move over him, warming him with their appreciation. "You must tell me if I go too quickly."

"I will, but as you have observed, I am the impatient one tonight." Valjean supposed that he might at one time have felt uneasy exposing himself so, but he no longer worried about whether Javert believed that any man must find it degrading to be penetrated. They had stopped speaking of making love in terms of yielding or taming, and Valjean knew now that a man could be pinned helplessly beneath another even as his cock pressed deep within the other's body. He did not tell Javert that he had on some occasions pushed his fingers inside himself to see whether he would like it, and that even when it felt uncomfortable, he had been eager to give himself to Javert that way so that Javert could know the pleasure Valjean knew when they made love.

He had suffered pain and degradation enough to know that this was neither. Indeed, Javert gazed at him with some surprise as Javert's fingers spread the oil around the narrow opening. "You're more relaxed than I was, the first time."

"I have learned from you what to expect. I can see your care in this. And we have no more secrets to hide from one another." An odd look passed over Javert's face, which Valjean dismissed as guilt over the truth Javert knew but would not speak. He smiled. "And I have wanted you like this before tonight." His breath stuttered as Javert's finger breached his body, not because it hurt, but because it felt so intimate to welcome it knowing what they ultimately intended. His cheeks flushed as he rocked himself on the finger, taking it in deeper, with Javert watching his face to see how it affected him. "More, please."

"You look as if you like it." Carefully Javert pushed in another finger, moving the two first in tandem, then spreading them a bit, stretching him. A moan forced itself past Valjean's lips, making him blush anew, but he did like the way Javert smiled in triumph as well as eagerness. He did not try to hold back his groans when Javert found the spot inside him that made him spasm and clench around the fingers.

When he began to think that he might finish just like that, with Javert's eyes drinking him in as those clever fingers touched him in places he had never known could hold such pleasure, Valjean deliberately squeezed himself around the welcome intrusion. "Now," he said hoarsely. "If you are ready, which your cock, at least, looks to be."

"My cock may also be impatient." Javert was smiling as he shifted forward, leaning over Valjean, who raised his head for a kiss before letting it drop back as he felt Javert settle between his legs. The first thrust made him cry out, though he clutched at Javert's shoulder to prevent him from withdrawing. Javert looked at him with eyes that were as wild as Valjean always felt when they did this, when he was overwhelmed at once by the heat and tightness and by the fact that Javert wanted him in such a way. "Are you --"

"Don't stop!"

"I will never stop," panted Javert, letting his hips move, driving himself in deeper with each thrust, his hands braced on the bed. "Oh, but I will not last!" His fingers clenched into the blanket. Seeing him so, Valjean raised his legs higher, wrapping Javert between them. "So strong," he muttered, "always, I always liked to watch you, Jean."

"Always?" Though he was breathless, Valjean caught Javert's glance. A question was forming, but then Javert pushed in at the new angle and sent Valjean's thoughts scattering. "Oh, again!"

"Jean, oh Jean," moaned Javert, voice as soft as a prayer, "Say you will forgive me if I cannot --" His hips jerked as he pressed in and out again in rapid succession.

Valjean felt the muscles of Javert's backside tensing as he strove to stave off the rush of pleasure. "There is nothing to forgive, _bien-aimé_ ," he managed, stilling to witness the sweep of ecstasy across Javert's face. Keeping his knees tight, Valjean clung to him, though his own prick throbbed with need. "There never has been," he said, pulling the quivering man against his chest.

"I'll crush you," Javert gasped, though his arms were buckling, his knees going slack as Valjean pulled him close.

"I can bear your weight. To see you like this I can bear anything." He brushed wet hair away from Javert's face. "Anything." Javert's chest heaved against his, breaths dampening his neck.

"You are still unsatisfied," protested Javert, for the shape of Valjean's cock lodged firmly between them.

"I am satisfied in every way but one." Concentrating a moment, the way he had done sometimes when he had tested his own responses and used fingers upon himself, Valjean tightened the muscles that held Javert's cock inside him. They moaned together, then smiled together, still breathless. Valjean's fingers grazed over Javert's forehead, tracing the furrows there, smoothing the hair back before pulling him down for a kiss. There was sweat gathered at Javert's temple; Valjean brushed it away, then kissed the damp fingertip.

"Tell me how you watched me," prompted Valjean, surprised to see a flush of color seeping up Javert's cheeks.

"I didn't mean it like that," he protested, but Valjean clenched around him again, and Javert moaned softly.

"Tell you how you meant it." He shifted as the softening flesh inside him slipped free. Javert moved with him, keeping one arm and leg draped over him. A questioning look passed between them as Valjean shook his head. "Speak to me and watch me find that final satisfaction." He felt heat rising in his own cheeks, but he was determined to unbury this secret. He trailed one finger down Javert's arm, then moved it over to his own belly, sliding his hand around the still interested cock it found.

Javert understood what he wanted at once. Rubbing his cheek against Valjean's shoulder, he moved his hand aside so he could witness what he had inspired. "Strong of mind, strong of body," he relayed, voice rich with wonder. "Never broken. I have watched you save men others considered worthless, because you could, you had that strength. I have never forgotten."

Was Javert speaking of Montreuil or of Toulon? Though Javert might never name the second, its shadow was in the room with them, though transformed. Valjean had thought all the guards watched him like a wild beast in a cage. To know that even one man there might have noticed him as anything more was a balm to his soul. The confession washed over him as he thrust into the sheath he'd made of his fingers while Javert caressed his thighs, cupping the heavy balls, sliding his thumb over them as Valjean moaned out his pleasure.

"At first I didn't desire you like this. I believed it to be a base and ugly thing until you showed me at the wharf that it could be otherwise. I never knew such bliss existed." He bent, kissing Valjean's chest. "I watched you walk through this town, watched you as a child denied sweets looks into a shop window. I did not dare to let myself imagine such a feast." His tongue swirled around Valjean's nipple.

"You -- here --" groaned out Valjean as his hips arched him off the bed with enough force to make the frame shake.

"Always, Jean," Javert said, the simple words full of tenderness, and it was too much, just enough, oh perfect.

Once he could breathe again, he smiled as Javert draped the blanket over them both before nestling in the furrow of his arm. Valjean protested that he would fall asleep, but Javert simply chuckled.

"You have had a vigorous day, Monsieur le maire," he teased.

"And a vigorous night, _chasseur_ ," murmured Valjean sleepily. He felt lips brushing over his cheek.

"I wished to do the work tonight so you could rest."

"Was that the reason?" he asked, though he felt the words stumbling over one another as his eyes closed.

Another kiss fell, this time on his forehead. "I will watch over you." A hand moved over his chest, beneath the blanket. "As I have done before."


	7. Chapter 7

"Inspector Javert is waiting for you, Monsieur. I'm afraid he insisted." Valjean's housekeeper spoke as though she did not know whether to be apologetic or smug. On any other night, he might have blushed at the small smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth. As careful as he and Javert had been to hide their activities, and as much as Valjean had hoped that a virtuous woman would never guess at what might transpire between two men, she was well acquainted with his hours and habits, his frequent evasions, his clothing and linens. He did not believe that the woman would gossip -- when he had discovered that her ailing sister was not in fact ill but suffering from her husband's violent temper, he had warned the man of exactly what would happen to him if he mistreated his wife again -- but he disliked the thought that she might know something that could compromise Javert's honor.

This night, however, Valjean was too surprised to try to imagine what his housekeeper might be thinking. "I know how late it is, but would you bring us tea?" he asked her as he removed his hat and hung his coat on the peg. The stench of the infirmary still clung to it despite his walk home in the icy air. He took a minute to compose himself before walking through, straightening his clothing, leaving his scarf and gloves beside his hat. There had been no mistaking the fury on Javert's face and in his voice when Valjean had walked away from him earlier that evening.

"Inspector," he began as he entered the room. "It is a bitterly cold night. My housekeeper will bring us tea." Whatever Javert had come to say, whether to rage at him or to seek solace, it was necessary to warn him that they would be interrupted soon.

"Monsieur le maire." Javert held his bicorne under his left arm. The bow of his head was swift and perfunctory, as it had been when Valjean had strode past him with Fantine in his arms. "I did not intend to stay for tea." There was no mistaking the contempt with which Javert spat the last word.

Valjean knew that he had only a few minutes before the tea arrived, at which time the Inspector might already have stormed out, and if he had not, they would need to turn their conversation to the weather while his housekeeper was within earshot. "Javert," he said urgently. "I am sorry to have questioned the bounds of your authority, particularly in the presence of others. But that woman and her child are my responsibility. If I had let you send her to jail, there would have been documents, to release her would --"

"Monsieur." Javert's expression was stony. "Dozens of witnesses saw that woman commit a crime. The sergeant and my men saw her spit on you. By demanding that I release her, you have not only made a mockery of the police, but you have made clear to the entire town that you stand with lawbreakers and criminals."

Valjean had known that Javert's pride was wounded, and that Javert was very much a creature of pride, but he had not expected such vehemence in private. "She is only one desperate, grievously ill woman. I hardly think --"

"You do not think at all!" barked Javert. "You are the mayor of a prosperous town, yet you take yourself out amongst whores and pickpockets, you give money to them, you encourage their lawlessness. There is a man at the harbor who makes his living pulling and selling teeth, did you know that? The women drink brandy and laudanum so that they can service ten men a night. That is the sort of business you condone when you walk among them."

"It is my duty to help them."

"Is your duty not to the honest people of this town? The ones whose toil have brought you this prosperity?" Javert had dropped all pretense that he was speaking to the mayor; he snarled as he would have spoken to a prisoner. "Do you know what happens when you drop coins into the hands of street urchins? They give the money to their fathers, who would beat them otherwise. Then their fathers spend the coins on drinking and whoring, not feeding their families --"

A tap on the door interrupted them. As Javert turned toward the fire, squaring his shoulders, Valjean opened the door to greet his housekeeper, who wore an expression of frank curiosity. "I'll take the tray, thank you," he said, reaching out to do so, blocking any view of the room with his own broad shoulders. "You may retire for the night. We may be some time yet."

"If you wish, sir, I --"

"No. Please, go to bed." Valjean knew that his tone was stern and cold, but it was all he could do not to shout at this woman who had done no wrong. It would take all his effort not to shout at Javert. He set the tray on the table before its rattling could betray that his hands were shaking. "Please, have some tea. Javert, we may never agree on this. I must do what I believe is right, as must you. I'm sorrier than I can say to have made you believe I don't respect your authority. I thought it would be better to set her free on my word than to fill out papers citing the criminal code, which would become a permanent record. And I could see that she could barely stand -- she might not have survived a night in the jail. I would not have her death on your conscience or on mine."

From the set of Javert's jaw, Valjean could tell that he was not appeased. He expected Javert to say that Fantine's death would have been none of his responsibility. Instead Javert asked, "What were you doing near the officers' cafe?"

"Nothing in particular. You know that it's my habit to walk through the town, to see for myself that all is well."

"Yes. I can see where that is necessary if you will not allow the police to uphold the law. But on a night such as this, when it is cold even in a fine house in front of the fire?" Fury leapt in Javert's eyes. "Were you going to the wharf, perhaps?"

Valjean had picked up his cup and had to set it down at once as scalding tea poured over his hand. "You are only asking me that to provoke me. As you said, it is cold tonight even in front of the fire. And you know full well that I would not -- there will never be another!"

"I have only the assurance of a man who chooses the word of a whore over that of a gentleman. How do I know what deeds you can do and persuade yourself that you will be forgiven?"

"Because you know me, and you should know better than to say such a thing to me." There was no denying that Javert's words wounded Valjean deeply, yet he forced himself to remain calm. "This is not the first time we have disagreed about the fairness of the law and I daresay it won't be the last. I promise to take more care in the matter should another situation like this one arise. Now I can do no more than ask your pardon."

But Javert refused to meet his eyes. "I take my leave, Monsieur. Thank you for the tea." He had not touched his cup.

"Don't leave like this. Sit and warm yourself a while, we can speak of other things."

"I dare not speak at all. I beg you, let me go before I utter words that can never be unsaid." Javert put his hat back on his head, his posture that of an unbending officer, his face a mask. Perhaps at this moment he could only see Valjean the criminal, not the man who had loved him and shared his bed all these weeks. Nodding, Valjean drew himself inward, walking Javert to the door. They said their goodnights stiffly. It was only when the Inspector was halfway to the square that Valjean thought that he should have begged Javert to pray with him.

He hardly slept at all that night, nor the next, nor the one after. He did not see Javert and could think of no plausible reason to summon him. He stopped by the police station, hoping to impress upon the men his confidence in the Inspector's work, but Javert was not there.

The next day it snowed and the winds were bitter. Unlike the previous day, when he had attempted to distract himself by visiting several of the shops in town and spending time reading to Fantine, Valjean went directly to his office. There he sat, annotating the docket which contained the trials of the commission on highways for the infraction of police regulations, stabbing it on occasion with his pen, until a clerk knocked on his door: "Inspector Javert is here to see you, Monsieur."

Valjean's first thought upon seeing Javert's face was that someone must have died. He rose at once to his feet. "What is it? What is the matter, Javert?"

Javert glanced behind himself at the door. Nearly everyone had gone for the day, though the clerk was still below. "I have received a letter, Monsieur," he replied in a voice that made Valjean's chest tighten.

"What did it say? Has something happened to your family?" That seemed unlikely, for Javert had told him that he had no family with which he kept in contact. An equally upsetting thought came into Valjean's mind. "If the Prefecture seeks to reassign you, I'll speak to them. Surely there has not been time for you to inquire about a transfer..."

Javert shook his head, turning his hat over in his hands. "I will be truthful. I did think about resigning, but I chose not to act in haste." He swallowed. Valjean had never seen him so unhappy, not even when they had argued. "I have here a letter from an officer at Faverolles. As I have told you, when I first arrived at Montreuil-sur-Mer, I developed a suspicion of you because you resembled a man I had known, long ago, in the galleys at Toulon. A convict."

Valjean clenched the pen in his hand so hard that it snapped. "You've come here to tell me that you told someone else of your suspicions, and now there are questions," he guessed.

"No." Though the word should have been a relief, the melancholy of Javert's expression did not permit it. "I only expressed the most casual curiosity, in a congratulatory letter to a man with whom I had worked who had just been promoted. I asked him whether Paris had had any news of the whereabouts of Jean Valjean, the dangerous criminal who had broken his parole and disappeared. It was not the first time I had made such an inquiry." Valjean sat heavily back in his chair. "Several days ago, this officer from Faverolles wrote to tell me that Jean Valjean has been found: an old fellow called Champmathieu. He was arrested for the theft of apples. In the prison at Arras, he was recognized by an ex-convict named Brevet. This Champmathieu claims not to be Jean Valjean, but he has been identified as Jean Valjean by two other convicts."

"Ah," was all Valjean could manage to say. It hurt his chest to breathe.

"I went at once to Arras. I let you believe that I was angry so you wouldn't seek to learn where I was going. The resemblance between this man and -- and Jean Valjean is remarkable. I told the examining judge that this was not Jean Valjean, but with three other witnesses, there must be a trial."

"Will this Champmathieu be condemned on the word of three convicts?"

"He might." Javert's eyes were downcast. "I will return to Arras to testify before the court that he is not Jean Valjean. But if he is convicted, it will be the galleys for life, and I will have condemned an innocent man by my silence." Abruptly Javert's demeanor changed. He looked directly at the mayor behind the desk. "Unless you tell me that there has been some mistake, and that man in Arras could be Jean Valjean."

"You know I won't do that." All the while Javert had been speaking, Valjean's thoughts had been in disarray. Though he could not imagine how it could be so, he feared that Javert might confess to lying to the police and allowing this Champmathieu to go to judgment in place of Valjean. It would have freed Valjean from all suspicion forevermore, yet it would have destroyed both of them in the eyes of God and before one another. "I have never wanted to lie to you, Javert, though you never let me tell the truth. But now the name has been spoken, I must acknowledge it as mine. I am Jean Valjean."

The bicorne fell to the floor. Javert let it lie there, reaching instead to the desk to support his own weight. His look was at the same time immensely relieved and thoroughly despondent. "I had hoped that you would lie to me. If you were dishonest in this, I might be able to do my duty."

"You must do your duty nonetheless. You must arrest me and take me to Arras. I only ask that you grant me two things. Give me a few hours to put my affairs in order here, to be certain that the factory will continue to thrive and its workers to be paid when I am gone. And let me make arrangements to retrieve the daughter of that woman Fantine. The woman is dying, Javert, they tell me at the infirmary that the sight of her daughter may be the only thing that can save her, but the scoundrel who cares for the child is using her to extort money and will not send her. You may accompany me on these errands, you need not let me out of your sight. I give you my oath that I will not try to escape. Will that satisfy your honor?"

"I no longer know the meaning of that word." Javert's face was ashen. "Why would you go to Arras? What justice would it serve? The man, Champmathieu, is a thief as you were. He is not an innocent. If you stay here, you can save the child yourself, you can oversee the repairs to the docks, you can do the hundred things no other mayor would put himself out to do. Would it be so different to hide your name now as you hid it the first night we met at the wharf?"

Valjean sucked in a painful breath. "Are you testing me?" From the misery in Javert's face, he did not believe it to be so. "You know why I must go. If I stay here, I condemn a man whose greatest crime is to bear my face. I would be damned, and you would hate me -- and yourself. I could withstand that least of all. I could bear the galleys with more grace."

Javert flinched as if he had been struck by a guard's cudgel. "Suppose I could not bear to see you in the galleys," he began.

"You will not see me." The agony of it struck Valjean, making his chest tighten again until he could scarcely breathe. "You will return to your post. We will never see each other again."

"No." Javert's voice had become implacable. "This is not justice, that you should go to prison and I should go free."

"You've committed no crime --"

"I had abominable thoughts about you from the first! Since Toulon! I told you I had always watched you. I indulged in vile and depraved fantasies about you. At first I tried to mortify my flesh, but even that would not stop my dreams." Javert gestured at his back as Valjean stared in horror. "I didn't understand why I checked the work lines every day, nor why my heart clenched when the rolls of men killed were posted. When I saw you here in Montreuil, I thought it was what I deserved, to serve a false mayor who would remind me every day that I was myself base and corrupt. I watched you trick people with your prayers and your charity. I watched them become better men because of you. Then I had a strange thought. I began to wonder whether it was possible that you were not entirely corrupt, which would mean that I was not entirely corrupt either, despite what I yet wished to do with you."

Valjean's hands were trembling, rattling the papers lying forgotten on his desk. "I would not have found your thoughts abominable," he whispered. "There is no crime in wanting. You have never taken anything from me that I did not gladly give, and you returned to me more than I would have dared to wish."

"You don't know how vile a man I was. I did not imagine that you would consent to it, I thought I would have to threaten you to have you, and even that did not stop me from wanting it. When you appeared at the wharf, in that place where men satisfy their most perverse lusts while hiding their faces, I could not stop myself from taking what I had always wanted of you -- Monsieur le maire, Monsieur le bagnard. I expected the act to debase us both. I could not know it would move me to feel such shame at what I had imagined that I wanted pray with you. Yet I took the same advantage of you the next night, and the next..."

"Javert, it was I who followed you to the wharf, and what I thought I hid from you was far worse than any secret you kept from me. If you had told me that night that you were imagining the mouth of a convict, I would not have felt betrayed -- I would have told myself that it was all I deserved."

"You told me once that I deserved to be loved by someone honest," muttered Javert. "Do you not deserve the same?"

"You haven't been dishonest. No matter what you might have wished, you know better than anyone that a man can't be arrested only for what he imagines himself doing. I scarcely knew what I wanted, that first night, but you saw how quickly I succumbed. Since then I have wanted you on the straw in the stables, and against the wall of the police station, and bent over this very desk. If it is a crime to have such desires, then I am equally guilty, now."

Valjean knew well the look on Javert's face, cheeks flushed, lips slightly parted, eyes clouded with desire. Perhaps it should have troubled him to know that Javert had dreamed of corrupting him, but Javert had evidently punished himself for it long after Valjean would have forgiven him.

"I hold you blameless, _chasseur_ ," he said, daring a small smile. "If we had time, I would give you any pleasure you had ever conjured in your thoughts."

Javert did not smile. He pressed his lips together and straightened. "You will not go to Arras. I will go alone." The face and voice now expressed the same determination. "I will stand before the court and tell them that that man Champmathieu is not Jean Valjean. If they refuse to believe me, I will tell them I know it to be true because I myself have done away with Jean Valjean. That criminal no longer exists. I will be able to persuade them of this because it's true."

"It's also madness." Valjean had to duck his head to swallow, recovering his voice. "Do you think I would let them put you in prison in my stead any more than this stranger they have found?"

"Perhaps not." The set to Javert's jaw had not altered. "But you will not go to Arras. You will go retrieve the child of that woman in the infirmary. If you care for me at all, you will trust me to persuade the judge that Champmathieu is not Jean Valjean, and spare me the knowledge that I have let you go back to the galleys. If you let them send you back, I will have to find a way to share your chains."

"You know that I love you," whispered Valjean, reaching at least across his desk to take Javert's hand. "But I will not let an innocent man go to prison in my place. If you are unable to persuade them, you must promise me that you will let me speak to them."

"I will persuade them," repeated Javert, squeezing his hand in a brutal grip. "I swear this by all that we have been to one another. You will not be returned to prison."

A sound below made them spring apart. Valjean had completely forgotten that Lafitte's man would be coming to discuss the accounting books; he had thought the snow might keep the man from arriving. "I must speak to the banker," he told Javert. He knew even then that he would be withdrawing and burying all of his money, but he did not let himself think further on his plans, not while Javert was gazing at him with such passion. "And you must prepare to go to Arras."

"We will see each other again soon," Javert said, as if he needed the reassurance more than he wished to offer it to Valjean. "In two days it will all be over. Champmathieu will be free, and even if they think me mad, no one will have reason ever to question you."

" _Au revoir, mon ange_ ," whispered Valjean. His heart was too full to say more.


	8. Chapter 8

It was done. The money had been secreted away. The horse and tilbury had been hired. Arrangements had been made for the benefit of the housekeeper, the sisters in the infirmary, all the workers. Fantine had been assured that her child would be there soon, and the monstrous Thénardier warned what would befall him otherwise. Valjean could not afford to do more; he could not risk the appearance that he might intend not to resume his post or duties.

Javert was already on the diligence traveling overnight to Arras. No further farewell had been possible. Valjean would see him soon enough, at the trial the next afternoon, but by then Javert would know that he had been misled and that Valjean had always intended to go to Arras as well. Whatever the outcome of the trial, Javert might never forgive him for that deception.

Had Javert known, he might have forgiven even less Valjean's thoughts in the dark night, when Valjean had pondered, for more than a few moments, how easy it would have been to allow Champmathieu to go to prison in his place.

Looking down at the reins in his hand, Valjean wished the journey were not so long and that his thoughts could be as ordered as Javert's. His own were in a jumble of anxiety and anticipation. Not for the first time, he wondered if what he was doing was what God wanted him to do, to assure that no one came to harm because of Valjean's own past misdeeds and that -- surely he and God were agreed upon this -- no harm should befall Javert.

It had been Javert's assertion that he would find a way to share the galley with him should Valjean be condemned again that had led to this journey. The road was filled with ruts, both of the physical kind and the sort that jolted a man wrestling with his own conscience. If only they had met the last time under less fraught conditions, and if only they had not quarreled over Fantine the time before that. It was easier to think on the time before that, when they had made love and kissed and parted as friends.

Whatever else occurred in the courtroom, Valjean had the woman and her child to consider. One way or another, nothing would ever be the same, for himself, for Javert, or for the little girl. Could he truly start again, with his cached hoard of money and his determination to do right by a woman he had wronged? Valjean sighed, peering through the dreary wood. He would have to. The sisters did not believe that Fantine could live for long. Cosette needed someone to look after her, and Javert needed --

Valjean's groin tightened. He knew exactly what Javert needed but it would be a long time before either of them would be able to grant it to one another. And perhaps a long time was generous. Perhaps the last time they had parted, sated and warm, would be the last time, truly. Valjean did not know how he could bear it, but he hadn't known how he could bear the galleys and yet he had survived.

For a time he believed Providence did not mean for him to reach Arras. First there was a problem with the wheel, then he had to change horses, and damage to the road slowed his progress. Slowly, though Valjean's thoughts were no more ordered than they had been before, the road widened and the markers for Arras came into view. Valjean gathered up his hat and gloves and tried to quell the dread that would not be rooted out of his breast. God had given him this burden and God must have given him the gifts to carry it. God had given him Javert, too, and that, Valjean knew, was the gift he would treasure no matter the outcome of the day.

From the time he arrived in Arras, one disaster followed another, the first being that he could scarcely persuade the Councillor of the Royal Court to let him into the packed courtroom. He had planned to watch the proceedings anonymously, but he had to use his authority as the mayor of Montreuil to demand entrance. He was ushered inside behind the President's chair.

Valjean could not keep his eyes from straying to the figure of Champmathieu, the man whom so many had mistaken for himself. Though Champmathieu was unkempt and appeared several years older than Valjean, even he could see the superficial resemblances of the color of their eyes and the curl of their hair. The accused was guarded by policemen and glared about in a manner that suggested he was both angry and afraid. Among the many people bowing and saluting the mayor as he entered, Champmathieu appeared singularly disinterested.

Once he conquered his initial shock, Javert glared at Valjean less with fury or betrayal than with a silent plea that he should not interfere. Seeing him there made Valjean want to weep. He felt lightheaded, since he had been unable to eat either before he set out or after his arrival. The sight of the prisoner who was so like yet so completely unlike himself, whose life he might easily have chosen to overlook -- justifying the choice by pretending to himself that Fantine needed him, the people of Montreuil needed him, Javert needed him -- made him shudder.

The prisoner spoke on his own behalf, demanding that the court speak to his onetime employer and insisting that he had stolen nothing even though he often went hungry, but the President announced that the employer was not to be found and the crowd laughed at Champmathieu's hoarse voice and simple demeanor. Javert testified next and was so persuasive that it nearly brought Valjean to tears. Yes, agreed Javert, the prisoner Champmathieu bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jean Valjean; yes, he was the same age, he moved with the same gait, he came from the same region, he spoke with the same accent, and it sounded as though his name could be a variation on Jean Valjean's mother's surname of Mathieu, which it would be natural for Valjean to have adopted to conceal himself.

But this man Champmathieu was slow-witted and simple, insisted Javert. He lacked the cunning and patience that had allowed Valjean to elude the authorities for so many years. Champmathieu appeared strong, but it was not the prodigious strength of Jean Valjean, not the stunning force that it was hard to believe any man could possess. Javert glanced directly at the mayor of Montreuil as he announced that he had spent many years seeking news of the whereabouts of Valjean and he was certain that Champmathieu was not that man.

The judges seemed impressed. Valjean allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Perhaps all would be well.

Then the judge began to hear the testimony of Valjean's former fellow inmates at Toulon, at whom he tried not to look, though as with Champmathieu he could not keep his eyes from straying. When Brevet was brought into the room, Valjean cowered behind the boxes on the President's desk, half expecting his fellow convict to spot him, point, and shout, "There! _There_ is Jean Valjean!"

Instead Brevet told the court that he was certain the prisoner was Jean Valjean. Though Champmathieu was more of a brute than Brevet had expected, he believed that age had taken the man's cunning. Chenildieu and Cochepaille, brought in to testify in the terrible cassocks and caps of prisoners for life, spoke with equal confidence. Champmathieu cried out his outrage, but the audience murmured assent more and more loudly as each convict declared that that man was Jean Valjean. It appeared that Javert's authority would not be enough to prevent the man's conviction.

There was no help for it. Valjean knew what God expected of him. He also knew what, deep down, Javert expected of him, no matter the agony it might have caused Javert to confess it even to himself.

"Look here," called Valjean, speaking to the three convicts he had never wanted to remember yet had never been able to forget. Though many in the crowd called out greetings and recognition to the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer as he rose, he did not look at them, nor did he allow himself to meet Javert's eyes. "Gentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released. I am Jean Valjean."

Later, he would remember little of the pandemonium as the President called for a physician for the poor mayor, whom he believed had been taken ill, while Valjean shouted questions at the convicts, reminding them of small details he recalled about them to prove without a doubt that he was the man in question. Javert sat rigid in his seat as if some act of violence had injured him so badly that he could not rise. Anyone in the room besides Valjean would have assumed that he was in shock over his failure to spot the criminal whom he had known as a distinguished man and a friend for all this time.

In the midst of the shock that gripped visitors to the courtroom and officers of the court alike, no one stopped Valjean from leaving the way he had come in, accepting the nods and bows of men who looked as if they could not believe what he had said. He rode all the way back to Montreuil thinking about what he would say to Fantine -- that he had been unavoidably delayed, but that he would fetch her child presently, that Cosette was well and so happy to know that she would see her mother soon. Surely someone in the town could be paid to carry out that task.

And Javert? How to apologize for wounding the man he loved so grievously, when Valjean knew that he would have had to do the same thing again if presented with the situation anew?

The sisters warned Valjean that Fantine's fever had grown worse, that she coughed continuously -- in short, that she might not survive the night, and only seemed to stay alive in the hope of seeing her child. Valjean could not bear to tell her that that might never happen. Instead he promised that as soon as it was safe, when her fever had gone down, he would have Cosette brought directly to her. Sitting beside her, Valjean forgot for a few minutes his own distress, so overcome was he by this woman's tragedy, wanting nothing in life more than to look upon the face of the person she loved most in the world, something she would surely not survive to see.

No matter what, he knew that that would not be his own fate. Javert could not have been far behind him in leaving Arras. Very soon, Monsieur Madeleine would be no more, and Javert would watch him borne away in chains. Valjean only hoped that Javert would not do something foolish like confessing that he had known all along the identity of Montreuil's mayor.

At least he had known love before he would be returned to a life that was no life.

He heard the clatter outside, saw the sisters' disapproving looks as they changed the water in the basin by Fantine's bed. Even the dying woman stirred in her shroud of sheets, hope blooming like roses in her cheeks as her unfocused eyes sought the source of the sound. Valjean released her hand slowly, cocking his head toward the noise. There was a hue and cry, but the commotion didn't sound as though a troop of policemen had arrived at the infirmary door.

Abruptly the noise abated and a single set of boots strode along the ward. Had one of the other officers been sent in Javert's stead? Valjean straightened beside the bed, looking around wildly, though he wasn't sure what he was looking for. He had no intention of escaping, nor of resisting arrest. He only hoped that Javert would allow him to instruct him about Cosette's whereabouts before he was hauled off to the galleys.

"No, you must not," he heard the doctor insist, looking as though he wished to drag the unwelcome visitor from the ward.

"I must insist," said Javert, his face cold and unmoved by the soft cry Fantine emitted. Valjean needed the bedpost to steady his trembling hand. It was very nearly too much, glancing from the dying woman to the face he loved most in the world, knowing that that face would never again smile at him simply because he was there.

"Inspector --" he began, but Javert held up one hand.

"I am not here to arrest you," Javert said. The words did not sound welcome to his lips. He looked road-weary and worn, his uniform stained, the lines on his face etched more deeply than Valjean remembered.

The sister gasped, looking at the two men, confused, no doubt, by the tension between them. Everyone knew that the mayor and the police inspector were on close terms, the best of friends. A noise came from the bed and one of the women rushed over with a fresh cloth for Fantine. "Where is my child?" she begged. "Why is that policeman here? Didn't you tell him that I was not to go to jail?"

It was evident to all present that Fantine was nearly gone from this world to the next. Her breath rattled in her chest. "Go," Valjean ordered the sisters. "You have done all you can for her. Let me speak to her alone." Javert stood unmoving as they withdrew, and after a moment, Valjean nodded at him. At least Javert would let the woman die in peace. "He is not here to take you to jail. I have asked him to help me to bring Cosette to you. I promise you, as soon as you are well enough, she will be by your side."

"You come from God in Heaven, Monsieur." Fantine's eyes were unfocused, each breath an agony of labor. "Tell Cosette I love her..." Her frail body convulsed.

"Dear Fantine, I swear to you, your child will want for nothing. She will live in my protection." Fantine's head fell to the side, and she did not breathe again. After a few moments of prayer, Valjean crossed himself and closed her eyes.

"She is gone." Bracing himself on the sturdy bedpost, Valjean reached out a hand to Javert, though he was uncertain of the impulse. He knew only that he wanted to touch Javert once more as a companion, even if they could never be what they had been, even if Javert's next action must be to cuff his wrists together. Instead he found that Javert had bowed his head and was praying, his fingers clenched around what Valjean guessed to be his rosary. Bowing his own head, Valjean did the same, offering up a broken prayer for Fantine's soul and for the child Valjean would have saved, if only he had had more time. "Will you pray for her with me, Inspector?"

"Do not presume, _Monsieur le maire_ ," Javert muttered, taking a step back. He glanced pointedly in the direction where the sisters had retreated, and Valjean understood that Javert had not yet exposed the mayor's true identity in Montreuil. In a quiet voice, Javert continued, "Could you not have done me the small favor of remaining in Arras? Was it necessary for you to put the responsibility for sending you to the galleys upon my soul?"

"You said that you had not come to arrest me," Valjean whispered, uncertain what Javert intended. "I am truly sorry to have deceived you, but I know that I was right to go to Arras. I heard the crowd, I heard the judge's remarks. I listened to men with whom I shared a chain say one after another that that innocent man was me. They would have convicted him and punished him for crimes that were mine. You may be angry at me, but I know you understand."

"I told you before you made this trip that I could not allow you to be returned to prison. I had very nearly persuaded the judge." Pausing, Javert drew his back straight. "What I understand is that you have left me only two choices. I can arrest you, which I have already told you that I will not do. Or I can let you escape, pen my resignation, and turn myself in."

"You can see that I have no intention of escaping. I returned here for one reason only, because this woman leaves behind a child. Someone must intercede on her behalf. I beg you, do this thing for me."

"I cannot." Javert's face was rigid as stone. "I will not arrest you. That puts me outside the law. I have nowhere to go but to prison." Valjean could see that he had no hope of persuading Javert to save Cosette. He knew the look on that beloved face too well. If he could not somehow persuade Javert to arrest him, as Javert's duty demanded, they would all be lost -- himself, his lover, and the child.

"There is a duty that I'm sworn to do," announced Valjean, raising his voice. "Three days are all I need. Then I'll return."

Javert stared at him, not comprehending. "What are you --" he began.

The edge of a plank of wood had come loose from the ceiling. Valjean gripped it and pried the entire beam free, swinging wildly at Javert, hissing, "You are not required to arrest me -- you are only required to try. If you will not retrieve this woman's child from the innkeeper Thénardier in Montfermeil, then I must escape from you for long enough to do it." In a much louder voice, he announced, "I am warning you, Javert!"

Whether by design or instinct, Javert had drawn his sword. Though Valjean could not look to see, he could hear the doctor and the sisters scrambling to protect the other patients, pulling the curtains around them. "What do you intend?" Javert asked him in a low voice even as he swung his weapon. In a voice that could be heard throughout the infirmary, he shouted, "My duty's to the law!"

Valjean moved the plank and Javert obligingly swung his sword at it, splintering the wood and sending a large shard skittering across the floor. Valjean picked it up in his free hand and waved it at the bed curtains, leaving a long gash in one. Leaning in as close as he dared, he ground out, "I will take the child to Paris."

Shaking his head, Javert struck the flat edge of his blade against the intact side of the plank. It sounded loud in the ward and had force enough behind it to send a sharp sensation of pain into Valjean's wrist, though he ignored it. "How will I find --" he began, swinging wildly into the remaining hangings, leaving tatters and scraps all over the floor.

"I'm the stronger man by far!" shouted Valjean, eyes pleading for understanding as he swung the plank against the sword again, cleaving the wood further as they both leaned their weights against their respective weapons. "I will claim that Fantine's child is a relation, now an orphan," he grunted over the scuffles they made on the floor. "I will place her in a school for girls. Many men disappear in Paris. You will have to find me there. Perhaps it will be safest to seek each other out in the places where men find one another."

"If you intend to escape, at least fight me properly." Javert let out a fierce growl and for a moment Valjean thought the wood had slipped, wounding the man he could never fight with all his strength. "There is no place for you to hide!" Grabbing Valjean's hand, Javert brought it to the sword hilt. Confused, Valjean tried to drop it, but Javert kept his fingers on his hand, sliding it to his wrist and freeing his own fingers. "It will look better if you appear to knock me out, _bien-aimé,_ ," he said, now close enough to Valjean's ear to whisper as they grappled against one another like wrestlers.

Their gazes locked, weight shifting against one another in a slightly more public display of something they'd done passionately in private. "I love you," Valjean whispered. There were wails of distress from the corridor, where the sisters could not ignore the commotion but dared not enter the room. Crying out as a man possessed of a great victory, Valjean wrested the sword away, though the hand that held it relinquished it without resistance. The blade swung wildly as he sought the proper way to hold it, trying to make sure the lethal edge was turned aside.

Javert's neck jerked back, though Valjean had only waved the sword in his direction. With a grunt of pain, the Inspector dropped to his knees, clutching at his forehead, sending panic through Valjean. Had he -- but there was mischief in Javert's eyes as he toppled to the floor and lay unmoving. 

With a strangled cry, Valjean threw down the weapon. Every instinct urged him to make certain he hadn't accidentally landed a blow, but reason assured him that he had not, and they were after all in an infirmary. With a last look at the man crumpled on the floor, his heart in his throat filled with unsaid words, he flung himself out the open window and bolted away from the hospital, bound for Montfermeil and an uncertain destiny.

He had kept upon his person enough money to pay for a carriage to take him to retrieve his hidden funds. When he reached into his pocket, his fingers encountered something unexpected. Pulling it out, he discovered that it was a rosary from his factory -- the one he had given Javert, the one whose beads their fingers had moved over together as they had prayed that first night at the wharf and on many other occasions. Javert must have pushed it into the pocket as they had struggled in the infirmary.

He would pray with it, and pray for Javert, until at last they could find one another again. Because he knew they must find each other again. He simply could not believe otherwise.


	9. Chapter 9

"Why do you always look behind you, Papa?"

Turning, Valjean smiled at Cosette, who wrinkled her nose in confusion. It had taken mere days for her to begin to call him Papa. At first he had encouraged it only because it prevented questions; a man traveling with so young a girl who was not his own daughter invited speculation as to his background and intentions, whereas a man in mourning clothes traveling with a little girl dressed similarly was presumed to have lost his wife and was treated with kindness. Now, after so short an acquaintance, he could not bear the thought that she might ever call him anything else.

How strange it seemed to him that trust and affection should come so naturally to this child who had known no tenderness since she had been too young to remember. Though Valjean had been fond of his sister's children, they seemed now to have been people he had known in some other life, as distant from himself as was Fantine from this daughter who could not even remember her. Now he watched over the girl as she slept, his heart filled with love.

He wondered whether he would have recognized the source of this dazzled state had it not been for Javert. The Bishop had taught Valjean to turn from hatred, to love all men as brothers, but Javert had made him understand how passion for one single person could renew the soul and fill the world with grace and light. Now he knew what it was to feel such adoration not only as a lover, but as a father, a joy he had never imagined for himself. If only Javert had been with him, Valjean would have felt utterly blessed.

With a sigh, he replied, "I am looking for a friend."

"I have never had a friend," Cosette said, her large eyes serious. "Éponine said that I was ugly and she would not be my friend."

"Perhaps she was envious, because in truth you are very pretty." Valjean remembered Thénardier's daughter, so spoiled that she would not let Cosette play with her discarded doll. Now that poor child would probably bear the brunt of her mother's demands in Cosette's place. "Soon, you will have many friends. You will go to school with other girls, you will be very happy." Even as he spoke, he wondered how he would make this true.

“I am happy now, Papa,” Cosette sighed, burrowing against him, her eyes already closing. She’d slept quite a bit in the scant weeks since he’d collected her from the inn. He wasn’t certain, but he suspected that her life of toil had left her small body more easily tired than a normal child’s might be. He let his fingers comb through the soft hair, marveling how far they had both come since Montfermeil.

They had entered the gates of Paris without signs of increased scrutiny. Valjean had sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the efforts of Javert for throwing off any pursuit. He'd presented himself at a church in a safe but not entirely respectable neighborhood, where he hoped that few questions would be asked, and consulted the priest about a suitable boarding house for himself and his little girl. Their overwrought state and road-stained appearance, plus the generous yet not excessive donation he had offered, forestalled too close an inquiry, and they had found rooms on the Boulevard de l'Hôpital, a gloomy but unremarkable place where it was possible to hide from intrusive neighbors. He had devoted several days to making sure Cosette would have proper attire, though he hadn't limited his purchases to clothing, so now several picture books sat beside her bed and a new doll nestled beside her as she slept.

As he had done nearly every night, he left her in the care of the old woman who took charge of their housekeeping and went out to walk. When he passed beggars, he performed charity work, with each coin blessing the God that had delivered him from capture in Montfermeil, given Cosette into his keeping, and allowed him the love of Javert. He had to put his faith in that same God that they would find each other in this teeming city.

There wasn't any way to make inquiries about how the news of his disappearance had been met in Montreuil, nor of how those fine citizens were dealing with the fact that their mayor had been a criminal who had violated his parole. Valjean had done his best for them and he could only hope that a few would forgive his trespasses. More than anything, he longed for news of Javert. He could not forget that the last sight of him had been slumped on the infirmary floor. Handing over a coin to a street beggar who had only one hand, Valjean murmured a blessing and kept along the road. Each night he became more familiar with the streets, savory and less so, of Paris.

There was one sort of area that he sought most of all. In Montreuil it had been by the wharf. He wasn't sure where it could be found in Paris, though in a city so large, he suspected that such places might exist in more than one neighborhood. He clung to the belief that if Javert could follow him to Paris, they would find each other where other men found each other and shared pleasure together. There was no large wharf that Valjean could reach on foot in the course of a single evening, for the Seine narrowed and divided around the nearby Île Saint-Louis so that only small boats could pass, though a small port served the wine merchants at Jussieu. But in his wanderings, he had discovered that the Boulevard de l'Hôpital ended near the Pont d'Austerlitz not far from the Jardin des Plantes.

So near to the Seine, there were buildings which had suffered damage from age and floods, just as there had been at Montreuil's wharf. And the Jardin des Plantes, which contained not only the menagerie that had previously entertained the King's family at Versailles, but the Labyrinth added by the Comte de Buffon, was said to be a place where lovers walked together under the trees. Valjean took care, for policemen patrolled the Quai Saint-Bernard. But that also made him hopeful. If Javert had made his way to Paris, perhaps he would have found reasons to work in the very areas where he believed Valjean might be discovered.

One evening Valjean had crossed the Pont d'Austerlitz when a most unexpected voice addressed him: "Monsieur Madeleine!" It was not Javert's voice, but he could not help himself. He turned to see who had called to him. An old man, leaning on a cane for support, was staring at him as though he had just spied an angel. "Don't you remember me? I am Fauchelevent, whom you pulled from beneath my cart! You saved my life!"

So desperate was Valjean to be certain that they were not overheard that he scarcely glanced at the man, whom he would never have recognized had Fauchelevent not identified himself. "Silence, my good man," he muttered as if the praise and not the use of Madeleine's name mortified him. No one appeared to be paying them any attention, one limping old man and another disguised in the odd clothing that Valjean always wore to hide his form and his money. He steered Fauchelevent away from the avenue. "What are you doing here?"

"You don't remember? You got me my place as gardener at the Petit-Picpus convent!"

Vague memories stirred in Valjean. What he recalled most from that event was Javert's terror that he had lifted the cart and risked exposing his true identity. He had scarcely recalled what had happened to the man. "Ah, the Petit-Picpus convent," he said as if he had demanded a recitation from a student. "Do you live there? Might we go there to speak?"

Once again Fauchelevent looked amazed. "But I am the only man permitted within the convent. No men are allowed. It is only through chance that I have found you tonight, since I have come out to find straw to cover my melons. It is going to freeze tonight. But it is great luck indeed, for I heard your name spoken just the day before!"

"My name?" Valjean blinked at him. "What do you mean?" He was poised to take flight, certain that the story of the mayor of Montreuil, now found to be an escaped convict, had reached even Fauchelevent's isolation within the convent.

"It is very strange, indeed. A policeman came to the convent. Perhaps you will remember him from Montreuil: Inspector Javert." Valjean could not allow himself to nod, for he feared that if he moved, his heart would leap into his throat and he would utter something foolish. "He asked for me, though this is very unusual, for only the Mother Prioress may speak for the convent. I was sent for, and when I greeted him outside the gate, he asked me whether I had seen Monsieur Madeleine here in Paris."

Valjean wanted to grab the old man by both arms, to shake him, to demand to know everything Fauchelevent knew. "Did Javert tell you where he was staying? How long is he in Paris? When will you see him again? Where may I find him now?"

Fauchelevent continued to look at him reverently, but now concern entered his expression. "I am sorry to tell you that I can answer none of your questions," he said humbly. "But I do believe I know how you may find him. He asked me, if I were to have news of you, to send a message to the Prefecture of Police, and to say only that his missing rosary had been found." Valjean's hands were shaking. He hoped that the old man could not see the tears that sprang into his eyes, but Fauchelevent stared at him in alarm. "Monsieur le maire, I have not forgotten that I owe you my life and my living at the convent as well. If you wish me to remain silent..."

"No, no," Valjean managed to gasp, shaking his head, swallowing to try to bring his voice and his hammering heart under control. "Father Fauchelevent, I will write to Javert myself to tell him that his...that his rosary has been found. You have done me a greater good than you can know. I have a young child -- " He could see that this shocked Fauchelevent far more than the idea that he might wish to hide from the police. "The daughter of family members, now deceased," he added hastily. "That is what has brought me to Paris. If there has been some misunderstanding, I must protect her."

To his credit, Fauchelevent understood at once. "There is a school at the convent," he said.

"That is precisely as I had thought. I hope that I will be able to keep the girl with me until she has learned to read a little. But if it proves to be impossible, will you inquire whether the sisters will have her? I can pay."

Fauchelevent's brow had furrowed, but he brightened suddenly. "I will tell them that you are my brother, come from the country," he said. "My brother is dead, but no one in Paris knows of him."

Again Valjean thought that his emotions would overwhelm him. Reaching out, he clasped Fauchelevent's hand. "You are the best of men," he whispered. "The child's name is Cosette. Promise me that if I must send her to you, you will greet her as your own brother's child."

"Monsieur, I will." The old man smiled at him. "Perhaps you would like to use his name: Ultime Fauchelevent. I would be honored to call you my brother."

On his way back to his rooms, Valjean stepped into a church and put a few more coins into the collection box, stopping by the altar and kneeling though he spoke no prayers. There were some words he would always keep private in his heart, and God, who surely had brought him this news, would understand.

Once back at the rooms they called home, he thanked the housekeeper and carried his candle to check on Cosette himself. For long moments he sat by her bed and pictured her delight at learning she was soon to have an entire convent full of friends.

Then, taking out his writing things, he composed the note he would send out the next morning, and slept better than he could remember since the last night he and Javert had shared his bed in Montreuil.

Once he had given his note to a boy to carry to the Prefecture, with the promise of another ten francs for him the next day when he would learn whether the boy had done exactly as asked, Valjean could do nothing to make the time pass any more quickly. As expected, Cosette greeted his news about Fauchelevent with a resiliency that Valjean admired. "How many girls are in the convent, Papa?" she asked more than once. "Will I be able to bring my doll and my books?" and "I will still have you as my Papa, won't I?" He answered her questions, even those she repeated several times, with as much patience as he possessed.

"We shall visit the convent. The Reverend Mother will show you the school and the other little girls. I told you, I am not permitted inside because I am a man, but I will visit you every day and you can tell me all about your friends and what progress you are making in school."

It didn't matter that he had explained it already. Cosette asked him again over dinner, then made a game of it before she fell asleep that night. "How many little girls are there in the convent?" she asked, picking out a picture book and thrusting it into his hands.

"A great many," Valjean explained again, turning the pages for her.

"Is it a beautiful convent?" she asked, burrowing beneath his arm. "Like a castle?"

"Soon enough you shall see for yourself, _mon ange_ ," he said, brushing the hair away from her temple. He thought of his other angel, the one who had found a way to find him, as he tucked Cosette into her bed.

He went to the Cathedral that night, though he knew it was probably too soon. Even if his note had found its way to Javert, the Inspector undoubtedly had duties and could not simply drop everything to travel across Paris to meet him. He had not ventured across the bridge to the Île de la Cité before, afraid of attracting unwanted attention, particularly with Cosette, for he did not trust that the Thénardiers had not reported her stolen even after all the money he had given to them. That the Cathedral was known to be a place of sanctuary made it paradoxically more difficult for those most in need to approach, for the police were vigilant in looking for criminals in the vicinity and the Conciergerie stood very near.

It must have been a quiet night, for Valjean saw no evidence that officers of the law were patrolling the cathedral with special vigilance. Perhaps, he thought, Javert had been called away to another part of the city, or perhaps he had been far from the Prefecture all day, never to receive Valjean's note: _Your missing rosary has been found. Our lady will return it to you in the sight of Saint Louis._ He had not dared to be more specific but he trusted that Javert would understand to look for him near the small chapel to the side of the nave. Half-hidden by a column, he waited, the rosary from Montreuil hanging from his fingers.

Javert did not come.

Though it was rare for Valjean to venture out in full daylight, the next day was quite cold, giving him a reason to bundle both himself and Cosette in many layers of clothing. He asked if she would like to see the convent from the outside and she eagerly agreed, though Valjean thought that had less to do with the destination than the opportunity to spend time with him doing something new. He was trying to teach her to read so that she would not be too far behind the other girls when at last he was able to place her in school, and though Cosette was an obedient pupil, she sometimes glanced at their single window as if longing to see more of the world beyond.

Cosette drew back when she saw the convent gates. "How will I see you if they lock me inside?" she asked.

"The gates are to protect the girls, and the nuns, for no man may enter the convent building. But see, people can enter the church from the street, and as your father, I will be able to visit you when you are not busy with school or with the other girls."

"And you will come every day?" she asked, her small face wrinkling anxiously.

"I give you my word. You'll be much happier here taking classes with your friends instead of waiting for me in our room when I must go out, with only an old woman and your doll for company."

Cosette looked doubtful, but she nodded. Valjean was about to ask her whether she would like to visit the menagerie in the Jardin when he heard a voice. "Monsieur Mad-- mon frère Ultime!"

Turning, he saw the anxious face of Fauchelevent, approaching as quickly as his shattered knee would allow. Valjean's heart was already racing. When he felt Cosette tug on his hand, trying to withdraw from the stranger who had made Valjean turn so pale, he gave her a reassuring smile. "Cosette, this is the gardener at the convent, and he will be your --" The familial names still seemed strange, though no stranger, perhaps, than that Cosette should call him Papa. "He will be your Uncle Fauchelevent."

Fauchelevent nodded and smiled at her, and though Cosette still hid halfway behind Valjean, she smiled back. "But it is a miracle that you have come today, Mons-- mon frère. I have a message for you." He thrust his hand into a pocket and handed Valjean a sealed letter.

Though he knew that it would be prudent to wait, Valjean could not bear to do so, not even for a single moment. "Cosette, show Uncle Fauchelevent your doll. She is very fond of Catherine, are you not?" Though Fauchelevent looked uncertain, he nodded again, and Cosette held the doll out for his inspection. Vaguely Valjean heard Fauchelevent murmur some question, but he had little attention to spare. He tore at the seal, unfolding the note which he had recognized at once as bearing Javert's handwriting.

_Our lady has many visitors. Perhaps my rosary could be brought to the old hermit's house, which is not far from the ancient robin's tree._

The words meant nothing to Valjean. Panic filled his chest. "Fauchelevent," he said, interrupting Cosette, who was describing a tea party she had made for herself, Valjean and Catherine with tiny doll-sized teacups. "Where is the old hermit's house?" Fauchelevent's brow furrowed. "Near an ancient robin's tree?"

At once Fauchelevent brightened, looking proud. "Robin was a gardener, as I am now. Every gardener in the city knows of Jean Robin! He planned the gardens of the Île de la Cité." Valjean frowned. If Notre Dame had too many visitors, he did not think that Javert meant for him to cross the bridge to the island again. "Robin is also said to have planted the oldest tree in Paris, during the Renaissance." Again Fauchelevent wrinkled his brow. "It is not far from the Church of Saint-Séverin. Perhaps that is what you mean by the old hermit's house, since Séverin was a pious hermit."

"My brother, you have saved me again." The smile Valjean gave Fauchelevent was so warm that Cosette smiled at him too. "I am very glad that you have met Cosette. I hope to bring her to the sisters very soon."

"She will please them very much, I am sure," the old man said. "And I will give her flowers for her doll."

Again Valjean thanked him, his heart still racing, but singing now that he knew Javert was so near and trying to find him with the same urgency. There would be no time to take Cosette to see the menagerie now.

He carried her most of the way back, not because she was tired, but because he was restless and it helped him to keep moving, even when his arms grew weary from carrying the girl. Feeling her warmth against his chest put him in mind of how badly he longed to hold Javert -- just to hold him, even if anything more proved to be impossible, that night or for many nights to come. Whatever God was willing to grant, if only God would grant that he could look on Javert's face and reach out to know that Javert was safe, it would be enough.

"You're smiling, Papa," Cosette told him sleepily.

"I'm happy," he replied, kissing the top of her head. "I have found you. I have found Fauchelevent. And very soon, I will find my dear friend Javert, and we will all be happy."


	10. Chapter 10

Though Cosette was hungry after their adventure, Valjean found that he could not eat a bite of the food their housekeeper had provided. As soon as the sky began to darken, he left Cosette in her care and went out again, wondering how his message had found its way to Javert and whether Javert felt the same frantic need to make time move faster.

He carried the rosary beads in his fingers as he walked, knowing that he might look like a mad old man to any who watched him. Though he always took time to help the poor, he ignored the beggars tonight, so set were his feet on their course. They took him northwest, in the direction of the great cathedral, though tonight he would not cross the bridge to the island.

Every time he passed a man of roughly the right height, his heart jumped. _Is it...?_

Surely Javert would not come dressed as a policeman, yet Valjean did not dare to scrutinize every face that passed. Pulling his scarf around his own face, he crept past poor men and gentlemen alike. The doors to the church stood open when he arrived, though the men inside appeared less interested in prayer than in sheltering from the cold. He had scarcely felt it, so distracted had he been by the heat in his blood as he strode toward the person in all the world he most wished to see.

As he stepped through the nave, Valjean thought he saw a figure dart into the shadows. _Could it be...?_ Javert was well trained in hiding himself and in following others. Breathlessly, Valjean walked around the interior of the church, allowing his face to be seen, not trying to disguise his form as had become his custom. He slid the rosary beads between his fingers as his lips moved, though he prayed with scarcely a thought to the words. Other words filled his heart, a prayer of longing and hope.

When he reached the confessional, which stood empty, its doors left partly open, he paused, then stepped into the penitent's vestibule. Long minutes passed as he waited to see whether he would be discovered, either to be ordered to leave or to be greeted by the voice he longed to hear.

There was movement beyond the screen, the clearing of a throat in the vestibule opposite. "I see that you have indeed brought something precious to me."

Valjean nearly dropped the rosary. "I didn't mean to give you a moment's trouble over its location," he said, curling his fingers around the beads lest he break the string and send them rolling across the stone floor. It had been only weeks since they had enacted their duel, but there had been acrimony and bitterness between them before that. Now Valjean's heart prayed its own sort of rosary, clattering over prayers that only hearts knew. "I hope you will forgive its long absence."

"I have gone to a great deal of effort to find it," Javert murmured. "I expect that it will give me much trouble in the future, but I can't live without it."

"On that account, we feel entirely the same, _chasseur_ ," replied Valjean, pressing the tips of his fingers to the screen that separated them. A moment later Javert did the same, creating a shadow as if they were on opposite sides of a wall in the moonlight. Only Valjean would have recognized the longing beneath Javert's curt phrases, a longing he ached to comfort and kiss away. "How have you come to Paris?"

"I asked to be reassigned here," Javert explained. "It's not as grand an assignment as being the head of --" He considered his words. "...business in the town where I toiled previously, but it was granted because of recent, shall we say, lapses in my investigational skills. A man escaped my custody, and now I have heard it said that he is dead, having drowned in his attempts to flee."

Valjean could not help smiling at that, but he whispered, "I am very sorry to hear it. I hope that your new posting will have benefits that other place lacked."

"Now that I have found what I have been seeking, I believe I will also find the city more accommodating."

There was a noise, a scuffling of shoes nearby. Hiding in a church was not so very different from skulking at the wharf, and Valjean discovered that the thought made him smile, though he imagined that he could face nearly any obstacle that night and continue to smile. "We should not linger here. I expect that your skills as _chasseur_ are as sharp as ever. I hope that you'll put them to good use." He stepped out of the vestibule, moving toward the nearest column, a pillar shaped like a tree.

After a moment, Javert followed, creeping from his hiding place in the priest's side of the confessional. His eyes darted about. There were men passing in the aisle but none appeared to be paying them any attention. Javert had indeed exchanged his uniform for casual attire, though, like Valjean, he was not dressed as a gentleman but as a laborer. He had taken off his hat in deference to this holy place and held it now in his hands as they stood only a few paces apart.

"Your rosary." Valjean stepped close enough to drape the dangling cross into Javert's hand, though it took the other man a moment to clasp it. Javert did not even glance at the beads, but wrapped his fingers around Valjean's, squeezing before withdrawing his hand. The uncertainty of the weeks before their separation fell away and Valjean smiled, feeling breathless. "I hope you find it worth the recovery. Keep it safe."

The rosary disappeared into a pocket. "That's what I've been trying to do."

Valjean felt his cheeks warming. There were other parts of him that no longer felt the chill of the night, parts that had known warmth that first night in Montreuil and had hungered since to recapture it. For now it was enough to see Javert and look his fill at last. "My brother Fauchelevent the gardener tells me that there is a very fine collection of medicinal herbs in the Jardin des Plantes," he said as if this had been their topic of conversation. "And beyond that, the Hôpital de la Pitié keeps its own gardens. I am fortunate to live very near them."

He dared not give more specific directions, but he trusted that Javert would follow him just as he had followed Javert those nights at the wharf. "Thank you for the information," Javert said, nodding at him formally, though the nod was not for Valjean's comments about the locations of gardens. "Now I know where to seek treatments for what has ailed me."

They stepped apart then and Valjean pulled his scarf over his face once more. He walked more slowly than was his custom, leaving some coins for the church before moving out into the night. He knew that he could not risk looking behind too many times to see whether Javert was following. Given Javert's skills as a police inspector, Valjean was not certain that he would spot the other man even if he glanced back. He did trust that if someone else approached, whether a policeman or a thug, Javert would find a way to warn him.

When at last he was in view of the Salpêtrière, he paused, pretending to cough. He could sense footsteps behind him, but forced himself not to shy away as was his habit.

"Are you well, my good man?" It was Javert.

Valjean pretended to hobble a few steps, making himself cough once more. "Yes, it is only the night air, and the cold. My lodgings are nearby."

"Then let me be certain that you reach them." Javert took his arm, his countenance stern. Even this simple touch after so long apart made Valjean's knees tremble. He did not have to feign the urge to lean on Javert for support.

"My landlady watches," Valjean breathed as quietly as he could.

"Then keep coughing, in case she is awake -- but not too much, in case she should come to question you about your health. If she does, tell her I am your brother come to visit you."

"You are the second brother I have acquired since coming to Paris," whispered Valjean. Again he felt happiness and good fortune surrounding him as surely as the chilly air. He was warm throughout.

"I am the only brother coming to share your bed," growled Javert, probably meaning to keep his voice low but sounding possessive all the same. The words sent a shiver of expectation through Valjean, the like of which he had not allowed himself to feel for too many weeks.

"The only brother I would ever wish there," Valjean replied, adding a little cough. He was not surprised that Javert had figured out whom Valjean meant, their unsuspecting go-between, old Fauchelevent. Police training had sharpened his keen and quick mind. Javert's hand squeezed his sleeve briefly and Valjean nodded in thanks. "I am just down this street."

"I will see you all the way home," Javert said, though Valjean thought he sensed a quickening in both their steps. No more conversation was possible until they were past the entryway. After an inquisitive cough, they crept in quietly, trying not to look as though they were being surreptitious. Valjean listened and the blessed silence of the house reverberated like a prayer. He thought of the blissful days in Montreuil and the uncontested privacy it seemed they had had in comparison.

He and Cosette had taken the best of the boarding house's rooms, which were quite plain and dark, though serviceable. Valjean lit a candle, motioning for quiet until he could check on the slumbering girl in her room. She still slept very well, as though she could never get enough of rest, and though she had been visited by frightening dreams once or twice, she was not in the habit of waking often. He felt Javert at his shoulder and stepped to the side, allowing the other man to see the child who had so quickly become so precious to him.

"You have saved her, too, then," Javert whispered.

"I promised her mother that I would. She is the sweetest child I have known. She loves me, and she will love you."

Javert looked uncertain, but he smiled as Valjean crossed to pull Cosette's blankets up and retrieve the doll which had fallen to the floor. Once Valjean had closed the door to his own bedroom and set down the candle, he turned to Javert. "I must express my --" he began, but Javert had pulled him close enough to kiss and took full advantage of their proximity.

"You worried me out of my mind," Javert said, demonstrating that concern with another kiss. Valjean cupped his face. Even his fingertips touching Javert's face felt glorious. The feel of Javert's breath against his mouth, the warmth of his body this close, all swirled through him, mixed with memories of their lovemaking. "I did what I could, but I was never certain --" He made a little noise and pressed against Valjean again, too fraught even for a kiss, needing, as Valjean did, simply to feel the other man in his arms.

This was what they had been made for, the gift granted by God to any man brave enough to find such love. "Oh _bien-aimé_ ," moaned Valjean. There was no more space between them, not when they had so recently been granted license to close it. He urged Javert to the bed, pausing only to snuff the light. Had they been someplace where there was no chance of being seen, he would have left it -- he could not get enough of looking at Javert, seeing the beloved face that in his darkest moments he had feared he would never find again in this life.

He would have been content that hour to lie with Javert in his arms, but Javert was already tugging at his clothing, moving his hands across Valjean's chest and arms as though he required the proof that he had once wished to deny of exactly whose bed he shared. They would have no more secrets from one another, now or in the future. He tugged at Javert's clothes, wondering whether the shoes might have come from a prisoner or a dead man, dropping the too-short trousers to the floor with his own odd garments designed to hide money stitched into the seams.

All the while, he and Javert were kissing, swallowing one another's needy whimpers. When they were both entirely undressed, Javert slid a trembling hand over Valjean's chest precisely where the brand lay. "I would know you anywhere like this, my Jean." he whispered. "I tried to promise God that if He would allow me to find you again, I would be chaste, but even in a church my flesh could not refrain from longing for you."

"Mon amour," Valjean murmured, smiling against Javert's skin. "We can pray for forgiveness later. Now I wish to praise God by celebrating this body he has given me to share with you." Again he wished that he could have left the candle burning, for he had always tried to keep the mark of the prison covered even after he knew that the brand revealed only what Javert had already guessed. "I have no oil..."

"I would not last long enough even if you did." They kissed once more as though they would devour one another's mouths. "Touch me," Javert demanded in the same desperate rasp Valjean could never forget from their first night at the wharf. "It will be as it was when we began, when we scarcely knew --"

The words ended in a muffled grunt as Valjean slid down to take Javert into his mouth, glorying in the taste and the feel of the flesh, his whole heart aching with gratitude to God for such a blessing. Surely it could not be loathsome to Heaven, for only through the most wondrous grace could they have found each other again. As he moved his lips and hands, he felt Javert's fingers dig into his hair, clutching at him, and when his breath was cut off by a sudden thrust, a muffled cry, and the flood of seed into his throat, he could have wept with happiness.

"Now let me," whispered Javert when he had recovered his breath with Valjean's head pillowed in the wiry hair on his belly. They shifted awkwardly, for the bed was very small for two large men, but Valjean thought that he would never mind, for it meant that they would never stop touching one another. Though he feared his overwrought emotions might distract him, he lasted no longer than Javert in the act, and they fell asleep in a perfect tangle of limbs, together as Valjean had wished nearly from the beginning, as he had long prayed that they were meant to be.


	11. Chapter 11

Spring had come once again to Paris. The flowers in the gardens of the Île de la Cité were in bloom and the herbs of the Jardin des Plantes had begun to release delightful smells that disguised the less pleasant odors coming from near the river. Valjean's wanderings in the garden had taken him to the menagerie, where he had smiled to see the great cats waking and stretching in the sun.

Though it was not always possible due to the long hours Javert worked, this afternoon he was able to walk with Valjean to visit Cosette, who was always especially delighted when both men appeared after her lessons were done. Earlier in the menagerie, Valjean had met an art student who was sketching of one of the tigers, and when he had admired the drawing, the student had offered to sell it for a few sous. Valjean had brought it for Cosette to show her friends; now he showed it to Javert, indicating the whiskers and the large paws with barely a wink to suggest who they brought to mind.

Yet Javert was unusually quiet, his eyes shadowed by the hat he wore to hide his face when he was not in his police uniform, peering suspiciously up and down the street. Javert had never been one to halt in admiring rapture for a flowering tree or a songbird, but often he would shake his head fondly at Valjean's attention to all the beauty of the world, which seemed so great to him now that he had Cosette and Javert in his life. This day, Javert seemed impatient, even annoyed.

"Something's bothering you," observed Valjean, tugging his collar up reflexively. During all the years he had lived in Paris, no one from his previous life had ever recognized him, but he could never rid himself of the concern that the past might catch up to them both, perhaps even to Cosette.

The dark look on Javert's face only made his suspicions grow worse. "It is nothing with which you need concern yourself."

"Perhaps not, but anything that troubles you also troubles me." They had both known there would be risks when Javert moved his belongings into Valjean's house, having rehearsed the story that the Inspector was a boarder who felt it necessary to live nearer to where he spent most of his time investigating crimes. After leaving the Gorbeau House, Valjean had been careful to choose a home where a policeman might plausibly afford to pay for a room, though it meant that when Cosette completed her education, her room would be smaller than she might have preferred. Of course, after the austerity of the convent, it was likely that Cosette would be comfortable even in such a room as she would have.

It was far more worrisome to consider the risk to Cosette if Valjean's own identity were somehow discovered. Fauchelevent was kind to the girl and she liked the old man, but even if Valjean chose to give Fauchelevent a small fortune, the gardener's declining health meant that he would never be in a position to serve as Cosette's guardian. He knew that Javert would never let any harm come to Cosette, but the hours and dangers of police work posed their own difficulties.

Valjean frowned at Javert. "If it is not a secret of the Prefecture, I wish you would tell me what troubles you."

With a sigh, Javert glanced about to see whether they might be observed, then spoke in a low voice. "I nearly made an arrest today."

"Nearly?"

"I lacked sufficient evidence, though that may change. There is a street gang, the Patron-Minette quartet, whose activities we have been attempting to document. They are suspected in several robberies. Many of them were once street theater performers and on occasion they wear masks."

"That sounds like a clever diversion, though scarcely helpful for men who wish to disappear after a crime. Perhaps I should have tried it in Montreuil."

Javert was in no mood for levity. "Recently I learned that they have a new associate, a man named Jondrette," he continued with a scowl. "I have followed this man for several days. He is a teller of tales, including one about how he rescued a general during the heat of battle." Javert paused, once more looking around to see that no one was close enough to overhear. "The man also claims that he was once a wealthy and respectable gentleman who was driven to ruin by unscrupulous persons. Today he declared that he was formerly the proprietor of The Sergeant of Waterloo, an inn in Montfermeil."

Valjean forgot to disguise his expression or glance about for anyone who might be listening. "Thénardier's inn?" he snapped. "Are you telling me that that man is in Paris?"

"I believe so." Javert was still scowling, his anger meant not for Valjean but for this potential threat. "I believe that this Jondrette and his wife may be the same people from whom you retrieved Cosette. If I'm right, and if they were to see and recognize you, I am certain that they would try to extort money from you. If they were to see me with you..."

"We must make certain that that never happens." Valjean was frowning too. "Do you know where he lives?"

"In an odd coincidence, he has rooms at Gorbeau House. He also has at least one child who shares them. It's very lucky that you are no longer in residence there."

"Perhaps it's not so lucky for Gorbeau House. If it were known that a policeman boarded there, perhaps the Thénardiers would have gone somewhere else." With a sigh, Valjean looked around the quiet street they had traversed to reach the convent. "You must not tell me that it is no longer safe for me to visit Cosette. I made her a promise when I placed her in the convent school."

"It has never been entirely safe for you to move about these streets as you do, giving money to beggars." There was a familiar combination of exasperation and fondness in Javert's voice. "I believe it would be safer if you always waited until I could accompany you."

"The beggars would scatter." In spite of himself, Valjean smiled.

"I meant for your visits to Cosette. She is older now; surely she will understand if you can't visit her every day."

"But I wish to visit her every day. It is as important to me as it is to her." Javert opened his mouth as if he would argue, then studied Valjean's face and shook his head again. "How likely is it that Thénardier would recognize me, or even if he did, that he would risk drawing the attention of the police to himself by attempting to cause difficulties for me?"

"Very likely, I think." Javert's expression darkened again. "Several years ago, while they were still in Montfermeil, I investigated the Thénardiers to learn whether anyone had reported Cosette missing. As you know, the vile man claimed that she was abducted from him. It was only after the police asked more questions than he wanted to answer that he changed his story to say that she had gone to live with her grandfather. If Thénardier learns that she is in Paris, he will threaten to expose her history."

Valjean thanked God that Cosette was safe within the convent, where neither Thénardier nor any other man could learn of her existence. "I thank God that I have you to protect us both, _chasseur_ ," he murmured. They had nearly reached the gates. Taking a deep breath, Valjean closed his eyes and tried to erase any hint of worry from his face. "But let us speak no more of this now. I want to visit Cosette with only joy in my heart."

Any worries that troubled Valjean disappeared whenever Cosette came into view. Though he had escaped from Montreuil with enough money to keep him secure, he disliked the feeling of idleness that plagued him when he was not out among people giving alms and helping with their broken carts and baskets. He spent many hours in the little garden he kept at the house and grew nearly all their vegetables, advised in this by Fauchelevent and learning from his frequent forays into public gardens. But after so many years at the busy factory, it felt like sloth.

Still, he had accomplished the two things he most wanted in the world, for Javert was with him and Cosette was safe and happy. "Papa! Uncle Javert!" she cried out when she saw them, though she had been instructed on the impropriety of a young girl waving and racing over to fling her arms around them. Cosette knew that Javert was not really her uncle, but her friends at the convent all believed the gardener to be a true relation and she had let them assume that her father's companion must be another member of Fauchelevent's family. Though it struck Valjean as strange that Cosette would not correct such a misapprehension, it helped them all to avoid questions, so he had never expressed his curiosity aloud.

"How are you today, _petit ange_?" Beaming, Cosette showed them the needlework she had been stitching before their arrival. Valjean could not say whether it was particularly skilled work, but he praised it, and praised her, and listened intently as she described her dislike of housekeeping and how much better she enjoyed numbers.

"She must get that from you," said Javert with only the faintest smile. He was far more interested in her history lessons and whether the girls were given a proper education about the law, but those were not subjects that interested Cosette except where they concerned the plight of poor people and efforts to improve their lot. Valjean encouraged such sympathies in her, though Javert fretted that she would not learn the proper respect for the government.

It always made Valjean wistful to bid Cosette goodnight, but it no longer made his chest ache as it had the first weeks. Though the months turned to years, his heart still felt light with the knowledge that he had found Javert and they were equally determined that nothing should ever separate them again. Often Cosette was called away by one of her friends before Valjean was ready to depart, and he smiled to think that after so much wretched loneliness, she had many people to care for her now. He hoped that Fantine would think he had done well for her daughter, though he could not begin to guess what Fantine might have thought of his sharing a home, and a bed, with Javert.

"No more talk of that monstrous innkeeper," he ordered as they headed back home. "Now that spring has arrived, we can buy berries in the market." Javert frowned as if he would object to them walking in such a crowded place, but he accompanied Valjean, who insisted on purchasing snuff for him since that was one of Javert's few indulgences. "I bought Cosette a gift today for no good reason. Let me do the same for you."

They did not speak about the Patron-Minette gang while they had their supper, though Javert's eyes repeatedly darted to the window as if he suspected one of the thugs might suddenly appear. Valjean could not wrap his arms around Javert and remind him that they were safe -- Javert had always kept him safe -- until the housekeeper had gone to her room for the night. He didn't know whether she had discovered how rarely Javert slept in his own bed, which the usually tidy Inspector sometimes left in a state of disarray simply to avoid suspicion, but the housekeeper was well-paid and well-treated, and unlike their landlady at Gorbeau House, she did not enjoy gossip.

When at last they were alone, Valjean lit the candles in the Bishop's candlesticks and put his hands on Javert's shoulders, peering through curtains out into the night with him. He brushed a kiss over the back of Javert's neck. "You can't see the street from this window. Nor can we be seen. Never worry yourself, my love. I will be careful, as I always am, and you will protect us."

"You are never careful enough." But Javert's shoulders relaxed under Valjean's hands. "Sometimes I think that we should take the girl and leave Paris, though I know too well that anywhere we went, you would insist on giving alms to beggars and helping gossiping old women carry their baskets home."

Valjean had to laugh aloud at this. "You're the one who would run mad if we disappeared into the countryside. Even without your uniform, I don't imagine that you would let highwaymen or petty thieves wander about without trying to apprehend them."

"Perhaps I could be happy doing something else. I could work the land. I have always liked horses. Or, if we are to be certain that no one will try to sneak around our home, we could harvest honey. I worked for a beekeeper, once, when I was young. No one would bother the bees, or us."

Again Valjean chuckled. "Suppose I'm more afraid of a swarm of bees than I am of a swarm of petty thieves."

"I don't believe that. I have never seen you afraid of anything in nature."

"You forget that I pruned trees. I've had more than my share of stings." He bit at the side of Javert's neck, making Javert yelp and twist in his arms. Smiling, he urged Javert toward his bed. "If I could be with you and Cosette, I would not mind even bees. I could tend a much larger garden. And we would thank God for all his mercies, small and large." Winking, Valjean added, "Sometimes very large."

"You are a braggart," accused Javert, though he could not keep a speculative smile from reaching his lips. "I shall have to look into these matters to see whether you speak the truth."

"Come hunt me, _chasseur_." Still smiling, Valjean pulled off his shirt and uncovered the scars he dared not reveal to anyone else. Here in the candlelight, with Javert staring at him hungrily, it was difficult to believe that any threat could disturb his happiness. He would pray, as he did every night, unable to find enough words to thank God for all he had been given, wishing only that such joy might continue.


	12. Chapter 12

"Where are you going, Papa?"

Cosette's voice arrested Valjean. Though he was already halfway through the open door, he paused and turned, shutting the door and replacing the bolt. A hand in his pocket thrust the letter that he had hidden there in deeply, so that there was no possibility it might fall out. "I need to make preparations for us to leave the city," he explained, trying not to sound abrupt with her. It was not her fault that so many disasters had occurred at once, making it necessary for Valjean to move Cosette while rebellion simmered in the streets.

"Didn't you insist that we come here because of those men who were at the house?" The misery that had reddened Cosette's eyes since they had left the Rue Plumet made her lip tremble. "If it is necessary for us to hide, why would you risk your safety to go out?"

Though Cosette couldn't possibly see the note in his hand, Valjean felt as if it were burning his fingers. Did he have a right to keep it from her? Once, he too had been desperate for just such a note from his beloved. But Valjean had not seen Javert for more than a day because of the same crisis that threatened the boy who had written a love letter to Cosette.

While Javert had been busy preparing for the uprising that his superiors had anticipated, Valjean had learned that Thénardier had found his cover at last. He had no way of knowing who had screamed to alert him, but he had heard the angry voices afterward, threats and shouts about the police. Bad enough that Thénardier had recognized Valjean and Cosette not long before, attempting to rob them in the streets of Paris before Javert intervened. Apparently Thénardier had managed to track Valjean to his home. If the vile man realized that a police inspector shared a home with the convict he had once allowed to escape him in Montreuil, it meant ruin for them all.

"I must find Javert," he said, turning his face from her.

"So that the police can protect us? Or so that you can warn him to run too?" When Valjean hesitated again, she reminded him, "Papa, I'm no longer a child! Please tell me the truth."

"There isn't time..." Yet he could see from the set of her jaw that Cosette was determined to know, and he was no longer certain that he could trust her to remain where she was told if he went out now without answering at least some of her questions. So he changed tactics. "Have you been entirely honest with me, my child?"

The evasive look that he had never noticed until recently came over her face. At first he had told himself that she must have picked up the expression from Javert, who was accustomed to deflecting questions from her and from others, claiming the necessity of secrecy for police work. But as they had fled their home at Rue Plumet, Valjean had found himself wondering whether Cosette had learned such avoidance from himself.

It made his heart ache to think that he might have taught an innocent girl to lie. "I know about Marius," he sighed, causing her to start and clutch her hands to her chest. "Javert saw you speaking to him at the garden gate. What has transpired between you and that boy?"

"Nothing has transpired! We have only spoken to one another, here and at the Luxembourg Gardens. Papa, I love him."

The words struck Valjean like a physical blow, even though he had already read Marius claim as much in the letter. He could see that Cosette's eyes had the same desperate look her mother had worn when Fantine had explained how her need to care for her child had led her to a life of shame.

Cosette raised her chin. "I have kept myself modest with Marius. And discreet! The garden gate is behind the house. Javert could only have seen us there if he was looking from the window in your room."

Valjean felt the paper crumple in his fingers as his fist closed. He took a deep breath to calm himself. "Truth is given by God to us all in our time. This is not the moment for such a discussion. I must prepare --"

"It is never the moment! So many things are unclear to me. Why are we always in hiding? Why did Uncle Fauchelevent know nothing about my mother? Why does Toussaint think that Javert is only your boarder when you let me call him my uncle? You will never answer my questions!"

If only Javert had been there, Valjean knew, he would have helped him find the words, or with a single look reminded him of all the blessings in his life. But tonight, when Valjean was already sick with worry for Javert and now frightened for the boy who had written to tell Cosette that he loved her, he had to struggle to remain calm. "I will make you a pledge," he uttered. "If you will promise to stay here and let me protect you, as I have always done, I promise that once we are all safe, I will answer your questions."

"You will only tell me again that you keep secrets for my own good," she protested, wiping at her eyes. When he looked at her, he saw not the young woman she had become, but the little girl he had taken from the Thénardiers over their false protests, the child he had wept to leave at the convent though he knew that he would see her every evening, the older girl he had taken home with him when old Fauchelevent had died and he had wished to give her a glimpse of the world outside the cloister.

Reaching out, Valjean took her hands in his. "I give you my solemn word, _petit ange_. I will tell you what you wish to know, even those things for which you may never forgive me." He knew even as he spoke that he would not tell her everything -- Cosette would never know how her father had abandoned her mother, nor that her mother had been forced to sell herself. But perhaps the only way to keep Cosette safe was to separate himself from her so that no one could connect her with a convict who had broken his parole...to tell her his own truths, no matter how painful.

With a small sob, Cosette pulled back her hands to cover her face. "I am not an angel, no matter what you wish. I know you think I have forgotten, but long ago I lived among all sorts of people -- women who gave me sweets I knew bad men had given them and gentlemen who tried to grab me when I didn't want to sit on their knees. Even in a convent, girls whisper and read books that make the sisters frown. I wanted to learn those things too! I have never been an angel."

"I have never asked you to be," whispered Valjean, reaching once more for her hands with fingers that shook. "I have only wanted you to be happy and safe from the things that no young girl should have to see."

As she had done when she was very young, Cosette buried her face in his shoulder. "You are very good, Papa, but I can no longer be happy with dolls and books. I want to know where you come from. I think I have guessed why you have those scars on your wrists which you take such pains to hide." Instinctively Valjean jerked his hands back, and Cosette lifted her head, wiping her eyes again. "I know that Javert shares your room, and what that means. It doesn't matter! There are many things about love that I couldn't learn in a convent. I only wish you would tell me the truth."

"Come here." He had to hide his face in her soft hair before he could speak further, for his own tears threatened to fall. Cosette wrapped her arms around him, clinging as she had done on the day when he first left her at the convent, before she could know that he would keep his word and visit her every day. "Upon my return, I will tell you all there is to know," he said, kissing her forehead as he had done when she was a child. "Go and say your prayers for those misguided enough to be out on the streets tonight, and add your Papa to that list." He tilted her chin up with one finger. "And pray for Javert, and for this boy who sees what a treasure you are."

She bit her lip and nodded. "I will tell you everything as well, Papa," she vowed, "for I never meant to keep anything from you."

Valjean managed to smile at her as he reached for the door once more, collecting his hat and settling it on his head. "Stay away from the windows and don't allow the door to be opened for anyone but myself or Javert."

Outside the streets were deceptively quiet. Far from rising with the furor of revolution, most of the citizens were doing the same thing he had instructed Cosette to do -- staying inside, praying, not answering their doors. The noises that he heard first, the unmistakable sounds of men and horses and wagons, could only have been the National Guard marching through the streets. Thankfully, Valjean knew those streets well. It was easier to focus on how to avoid the troops of men than on what might be happening where Javert was right now.

It had not been easy at all to accept that Javert had been ordered to infiltrate this revolutionary group, to place himself in such danger. Valjean did not dare involve himself in politics, but even protected by the wealth he had accumulated in Montreuil, he understood the simmering anger against the monarchy and those it protected. At the same time, he bitterly lamented the loss of innocent life an uprising would bring.

It was not the first time that Javert's police work had put him in harm's way, but the would-be revolutionaries were not petty criminals who feared the weight of French law. Many of the leaders came from privilege and had little understanding of the chaos they would create, which before the night was through might take the lives of many who wanted no more than a peaceful life for their children.

There was a racket of gunfire and Valjean pressed himself against a shop doorway, heart pounding. More shouting followed and several more rounds of firing. The schoolboys were very near, he deduced, skulking further back in the shadows when he heard the rumble of carriage wheels. Cannons were being brought in, the heavy wheels making ruts in the road. Valjean had to get behind the barricade, though he feared he might be shot by either side. There were bodies being pulled from a barricade already dismantled, left at the side of the road until they could be recovered. Valjean spotted the corpse of a burly soldier left behind as the wagons passed. He was about Valjean's size.

Several minutes later, Valjean -- now dressed in the soldier's uniform -- made his way through alleys past the ranks of troops. The barricade was more frightening than he had imagined, not because it was intimidating but because it was so ramshackle. It would not have thwarted peasants armed with pitchforks, let alone troops armed with cannons and bayonets. It was difficult to act as though he belonged as he made his way to the first of the barricaded storefronts, laying down his rifle when challenged and allowing himself to be escorted through the tangle of chairs and carriages.

"I am a volunteer!" he called out, wondering which of the young faces gazing at him suspiciously was that of Marius Pontmercy.

"You wear an army uniform!" one accused him.

"That's why they let me through," he answered, keeping his hands in the air. "I'm no spy."

Glances were exchanged and one young man stepped closer to him. "We already have one of those," he snarled, jerking his head toward the shadowed interior of the cafe. Valjean peered into the dark corner and thought his heart would burst. There was Javert, with a rope around his neck and another binding his hands. "A volunteer like you -- a spy who calls himself Javert," jeered the young man whom Valjean fervently hoped was not Marius.

Before he could reply, his eye caught dark shapes overhead, the movement of snipers creeping over the rooftops. Their guns were aimed at the young man who appeared to be the leader. With a cry, Valjean grabbed a gun from one of the students, shooting up in the direction of the armed men. As quickly as they had descended upon Valjean, the students aimed their own weapons upward, sending the snipers scattering until none were to be seen.

"For your presence of mind, Monsieur, I will thank you when our battle is won." The leader, whose name, as Valjean had overheard, was Enjolras, held out a hand.

Again it seemed that God had chosen to protect himself and Javert. "Give me no thanks, Monsieur," he said, trying to sound authoritative rather than terrified. "But there’s something you can do. Give me the spy, Javert."

Though Valjean thought that one of the other young men would protest, Enjolras looked relieved to have at least one problem taken off his hands. "The man belongs to you," he said, handing Valjean a knife as he turned to his little army of boys who would likely never become old men. One of the youngest boys passed Valjean a pistol.

Then Valjean did not hesitate. Cutting the rope that bound Javert to the stair rail, he led him out the back of the cafe, the knife still in his hand. "What are you doing here?" hissed Javert.

"It seems that that boy you spotted talking to Cosette is one of these revolutionaries," Valjean whispered back, leading Javert into the darkest corner of the alley behind the cafe. "I intercepted a letter. He says he loves her, and she loves him too."

"Yes. Marius Pontmercy. He is a fool. And she is very young."

"Not as young as we had believed." Valjean cut the knots that held Javert's wrists as he spoke. "We had to quit the house at Rue Plumet. Thénardier brought his gang. Cosette is at the Rue de l'Homme Armé." He paused, and something in his face must have alarmed Javert, for Javert's hand closed over his own. "She knows about us, Javert. And she says she knows what it means that I have scars on my wrists."

"She is not nearly so much a fool as Marius, then. He is the grandson of Monsieur Gillenormand, a wealthy man. You saw those schoolboys? Marius is the one with the besotted eyes and the weak chin."

"I will try to save him anyway, for the sake of Cosette." Valjean could not resist kissing Javert's jutting chin. "But you must get out of here."

"Not unless you come with me. It isn't safe for you. The attack will come before morning..."

" _Chasseur_ , I must try. If Cosette loves this boy even in some small part as I love you, I know too well that the pain of such a loss could not be borne."

Javert's fingers closed around his wrist. "That is precisely why you must come with me. Nothing has changed since Arras. I can't allow any harm to befall you."

"Then leave this place and put on your uniform. If I manage to persuade Marius to escape with me, we may need a policeman to help us pass safely past the guards. Tell them how clever you were to escape us."

Javert was already shaking his head. "Marius may not come. The fire of revolution burns hotter than the fire of a beautiful young maiden -- at least for now."

"He told Cosette that he would die here if he had no hope of seeing her again. I don't think he's like that Enjolras. He did not plan to give up his life until he believed he had no chance for happiness." They stared at each other, then nodded, of one mind as they so often were. Valjean didn't want one of the shifting shadows beyond the alleyway to grow suspicious at their close posture, so he drew the gun and gave Javert an apologetic look that he knew the other man wouldn't need. "Can you tell me enough about what the guards intend that I might be able to get him to safety?"

"We're surrounded. There are cannons at the front of the barricade and troops at every exit through the streets." His eyes rolled toward the rooftops. "There are snipers up there -- as you saw, but more in reserve. Every house that opens onto this square is guarded at the back door."

"What about the sewers?" Javert looked at him as if he were mad, but shook his head. "Then that must be my path to freedom. They will let you through?"

Javert hesitated. "You should shoot me," he said, nodding at the weapon in Valjean's hand. "I'm going to try to get the gun away from you."

Valjean's mouth dropped open, but he saw the familiar glint of mischief in Javert's gaze. "I will signal if I can." Despite the worry their predicament was causing him, he took a step forward and found himself with an armful of Javert. They kissed amid the struggle before Javert broke free. "Take this." Valjean glanced down to see the rosary between his fingers as Javert darted away.

Very carefully Valjean readied and aimed the gun at painted mural decorating one of the walls, squeezing the trigger while Javert made good his escape. Then he felt more alone than ever, even though he knew Javert would not go far and might create a diversion for him. The beads of the rosary slid through his fingers.

He found the young man named Marius, trying to see what Cosette saw in him that was not immediately evident. Valjean knew that he was not seeing the boy at his best, and for his part, Marius gazed at him with suspicion, not liking that Valjean had wished to execute the spy. Whether Marius had some personal reason not to wish Javert ill or whether he simply disliked such lawless violence, Valjean found himself appreciating the impulse. He approved of Marius even more when he heard the boy praying for Cosette.

Dawn came quickly, and with it the artillery. The boy Gavroche was killed collecting ammunition. Valjean watched students fall, boys whose names he did not know, trying to pull the wounded to safety, but there were simply too many soldiers. He watched Marius take a bullet and crumple to the ground. While the remaining students retreated into the cafe, he picked up Marius and carried him to the storm drain at the end of the alley.

Then there was nowhere to go but down.

As the stench of the sewer filled his nostrils, nearly choking him, he forced himself to think about Javert. The Inspector knew where he was; he would be commanding soldiers to search everywhere but here, and he would find Valjean if only Valjean could find the end of this sewage tunnel that must surely have been the upper level of hell. He could hear rats screeching and smell rotting corpses as well as human waste, the most vile reminders of the weaknesses of the flesh.

The putrid water rose nearly to the level of his eyes, making him gag. No matter how he tried, he could not keep Marius completely out of the filth. When at last he had to pause, closing his eyes and trying to remember the reasons to keep going -- Cosette smiling at him, the feel of Javert's fingers combing through his hair -- he nearly passed out from the fumes. When he came to, he saw something more vile than the corpses. A thief was moving through the sewers, robbing the bodies. He had his hands on Marius.

Valjean recognized Thénardier at nearly the precise moment that the man who had made a misery of Cosette's young life recognized him. "You!"

At any other time, no matter how much he appealed to God to teach him mercy, Valjean would have been tempted to grab the man around the throat and throttle him in the muck. But he had Marius to think of, and Javert, and Cosette.

"How do I get out of here?"

"That way!"

Thénardier had probably sent him in the wrong direction, but Valjean followed the tunnel toward which Thénardier's finger pointed. He turned and turned as he moved through the slime, begging God to show him his way in the dark, until at last he could hear the rushing sound of the river. Though he had almost no power left in him, he quickened his pace, seeing light ahead, praying all the while to God to keep Marius alive, to keep Javert safe.

At last, on the embankment above him, he spotted a stern figure. Javert was wearing his police uniform but he was alone. There were no guards present nor members of Thénardier's gang. Valjean had only to climb toward the light and they could find Marius the doctor's care that he needed.

They had survived the night. With Javert's help, he lowered Marius to the ground. Then, as Javert rushed to summon a carriage, he sobbed in gratitude.


	13. Chapter 13

"More water!" Javert announced, braving the kitchen once more. He had, at least, stopped wrinkling his nose every time he entered. They'd spent an hour heating water and pouring it over Valjean's body. Javert had declared the kitchen off limits to the maid Toussaint, whose modesty he claimed to be protecting.

"There isn't enough fresh water in all of Paris to get me clean," Valjean said with a shiver, hanging his head in misery, only to sputter in outrage when Javert dumped a cold pitcher of it over his head.

"You will never know if you don't keep pouring it," Javert scolded, dipping more water out of the kitchen bucket, which he'd already filled countless times from the well outside. "Dry off or you'll catch a chill." He tossed Valjean an old bedsheet, since all their other linens had already been used and given to the housekeeper to be cleaned.

"Tyrant," Valjean whimpered, but he rubbed the sheet through his dripping hair. "Do I smell any better?" He had only to look at Javert's face to have his answer. Dutifully he dried his hair off once more. His own senses had been dulled by the sewers so that he couldn't tell any longer how he smelled. His only consolation was that Marius smelled just as horrid and Cosette had experienced his condition vicariously, for as soon as they had arrived at the house, she had raced out of the front door to greet Valjean, only to be thrown back by the putrid odor wafting from his stolen uniform.

From the moment Valjean had reached the surface from the sewer, Javert had taken charge. He had already discovered the address of Marius's grandfather and ordered their carriage to deliver the boy there. It had been necessary to try to clean Marius's wounds before the doctor arrived, and though Valjean had carried Marius for what had seemed like an entire day, Javert would not let him so much as touch the boy with hands that stank so strongly of the sewer.

Though it might have been an inauspicious introduction to Marius's family, the old man was so relieved to have the sodden, fetid lump of humanity that was his grandson returned to him that he did not seem to notice Valjean was even more filthy. At the Rue de l'Homme Armé, Javert had helped the maid to fill the copper tub with hot water while Cosette paid the carriage driver handsomely to haul away and burn the filthy, unrecognizable uniforms each of them had worn.

"There is -- perhaps -- a small improvement," Javert conceded with the air of one bestowing a gift. Valjean was so desperate for some end to his endless scrubbing that he brightened, pouring the water with more enthusiasm. His skin was pink in places he wasn't certain should be pink and his hair felt as though it was falling out at the roots. Javert sat in one of the kitchen chairs. His own uniform had been contaminated less by helping to load Marius into the carriage than by the breathless kiss he had shared with Valjean as soon as they were underway. Perhaps he relented -- perhaps he sensed Valjean had been through enough in the last few hours -- but Javert leaned in and tentatively sniffed again. "Definitely a small improvement," he decided.

There was a new vigor in Valjean's toweling off. Though there was no modesty between them, it felt odd to be standing in the kitchen fully exposed, the scars and brand garish against his scrubbed skin. "Has there been any word on the boy?" he asked, tentatively reaching for the robe that Javert had brought in but not yet allowed Valjean to wear. At Javert's nod, he slid into it, vowing to never take the feel of clean clothing for granted.

"Even if the wound doesn't become infected, he will need weeks to recover from the bullet. His grandfather has promised to send for us tomorrow." There were slippers too. Valjean wanted to sing his love's praises for finding those, since he had not remembered packing them during the hasty flight from the Rue Plumet. Javert sighed as he looked at him. "I ordered Cosette to her own bed, though she wanted to help the maid with your linens. She must love you very much if she can endure the smell."

Cosette had told them somewhat hysterically that Marius refused to speak or have anything to do with Monsieur Gillenormand, but from the moment they had arrived at the old man's palatial house, Gillenormand's concern for his grandson had been apparent. Perhaps Cosette could be instrumental in persuading the two to reconcile. With a sigh, Valjean told Javert, "I promised her that I would answer all her questions if I survived the night. It might have been easier to remain in the sewer."

"No such talk," Javert said, hauling himself out of his chair. "You need to rest. I'm taking you to bed." In the midst of sliding his arm through Valjean's, he paused. "You said in the alley that she knows about us."

In spite of everything, Valjean huffed a small laugh, remembering how Cosette's chin had lifted as she spoke what was not quite an accusation. "She said that the only way you could have seen her with Marius in the garden was if you had been looking from the window of my room."

"Unfortunately, she is correct." Javert sighed, shaking his head at their mutual lapse. "Was that all she said?"

"She claims to know what it means if you share the room with me. Surely she did not learn that from the nuns."

"You could not have hoped to keep her entirely innocent of the ways of men. Otherwise she would have wished to take the veil, not to spend her life with that fool of a boy." Javert was guiding him to bed, pausing to peer through the half-open door to Cosette's chamber. She had fallen asleep almost entirely clothed, on top of the blanket, with her shoes left in the middle of the floor where she had removed them. "As the Bible says, it is better to marry than to burn."

Wincing, Valjean let himself be dragged to the room he and Javert shared nearly every night. One of the most heated quarrels between them had begun just before they had taken Cosette from the convent, when Javert had wondered aloud whether a girl might share her mother's inclination for passion and unchaste behavior. Javert had not been thinking of Cosette -- he had been sent by the police to a brothel to look for evidence that its rooms were being used to hide stolen goods, and he had come to know several of the women, many of whom were not the only ones in their families to sell their bodies -- but Valjean had become furious, and it was only after an astonished Javert managed to calm him that Valjean realized it was not Javert but himself who feared that such a blight could touch Cosette.

It was why he had not taken Cosette from the convent to live with them sooner, along with the fact that Cosette seemed perfectly content to live and study among the girls who had become her friends. Though she was late to learn her letters, she was an obedient and clever student whom the younger girls as well as the nuns had been sorry to bid farewell. It should not have been a surprise that she would guess at the secrets Valjean had tried to hide from her, though he still struggled with the idea that any innocent girl, particularly Cosette, might be subject to the same sorts of passions as men.

"You don't think we have corrupted her?" he asked Javert, his cold hands trembling.

"Only if by 'corrupted' you mean that you have taught her the greatness of God's love and forgiveness, so she will never have moments like I did long ago of believing it would be easier to throw herself into the river than to face the difficulties of life." Javert tried to make his voice cross, but he was smiling as he tucked blankets around Valjean. "Don't confuse innocence with ignorance. The fact that she has compassion for fallen women won't make her any more likely to behave like them than her affection for the sisters could make her wish to be a nun. And I wouldn't want to deprive her of the pleasures I've found with you." Javert's mouth brushed over his. "Now get some sleep before you are summoned to the bedside of that boy."

"You'll come with me. You saved him too."

"Something I dare not acknowledge, since I assisted a traitor. Marius must not know who took him from the barricade." Javert sighed a bit. "He and Cosette must be instructed never to speak of what they know of the uprising. So you see, we will not be the only ones with secrets."

The words made Valjean's stomach tighten as he remembered what he had forgotten to tell Javert in the carriage. "I saw Thénardier in the sewer, picking over the bodies. He recognized me, though I don't think he got a good look at Marius's face. Suppose he goes to the police?"

With a groan, Javert shook his head. "Surely that old jailbird Valjean must be long gone from Paris. Thénardier is well known to the police for his schemes and his lies. No one will listen to him. But I will be certain to mention in my report that he was spotted in the sewer robbing corpses."

"Aren't you coming to bed?" Valjean wanted Javert in his arms, a reminder of all the reasons he had taken such risks that night and all the reasons he had had to survive.

"Soon. I must write a report or I will be considered delinquent in my duty." Something odd crossed Javert's face, a bitter and unpleasant expression, but before Valjean could ask what was wrong, it was gone. "You must rest. You've strained yourself this evening more than I have. And you are after all much older." Javert winked at him.

Though he tried to croak a protest, Valjean could not deny that his eyes were falling shut. He smiled sleepily at Javert, murmuring, "Soon..."

When he awoke, still alone in the bed, Valjean knew that whether or not Javert had kept his word, he himself had slept right through it. The light in the room was strange; he could not tell if it was just before dawn or full afternoon on a rainy day. His desperation to use the chamberpot told him that he had slept for many, many hours.

Most of the house was oddly quiet, though Cosette's door was open and she did not appear to be inside the room. Valjean walked through the dining room but the housekeeper was not to be seen. There were noises coming from the kitchen, so he went inside. The housekeeper was not to be found there either, yet there were Cosette and Javert, their heads bent over a bowl. The sight made Valjean's chest feel warm and pleasant.

"What have I missed?" he asked, though his voice came out as a croak.

Cosette turned to smile brilliantly at him. "The doctor says that it will take a long time, but Marius will recover."

The look Javert gave him held feigned annoyance and real affection. "You must expect to miss quite a bit when you sleep for more than a day and a half."

"Surely I did not...!" Yet they were both nodding as Javert came over to guide him to a chair. Valjean paused to embrace Cosette, but as he did so, all the feelings he had managed to lock away while he was in the sewer and at the barricade -- and before the barricade, when Cosette had confronted him -- suddenly surged within his heart. He found himself clinging to Cosette and Javert both, weeping, while they both stared at him in dismay.

"Jean, are you hurt?"

"What's the matter, Papa?"

"I'm fine. I'm fine." He tried to wave them away, though he collapsed heavily into the chair to which they led him, and he let Javert wipe his face with a handkerchief while Cosette poured him tea. "What are you two doing? Where is Toussaint?"

"She fainted from the stench of your bathwater." Javert shook his head. "I told the poor woman to have a day of rest. Cosette is attempting to teach me to make an omelette. I have been thinking that instead of police work, perhaps I will become a cook. Would you like some?" Valjean could not think what to do but nod, since he was very hungry. "Cosette also has been enlightening me about her education at the convent. You would be astonished what girls find to talk about when they're supposed to be asleep."

"I fear there is little that would astonish me now," replied Valjean with a small sigh, though Cosette smiled at him like an angel when he looked at her. "I made you a promise, I know."

"You promised to save Marius, and you did." Again Cosette beamed at him. Valjean wondered how he could bear to live without the joy and admiration he saw in her smile. "Oh -- and you may stop worrying about the rest. Javert has answered most of my questions."

Javert's eyes slid away shiftily. At once Valjean felt wide awake, with a fluttering in his belly that had nothing to do with being hungry. "What did you tell her?" he demanded, his hand clasping at the opposite, heavily scarred wrist which he had always been terrified Cosette might notice.

"About your life before she was born, as she asked." Javert gave an exaggerated shrug. "That you were a tree pruner. That we met in the prison at Toulon where you had been sent for stealing bread to feed your sister's family."

Valjean thought his heart might stop, but Cosette shook her head and made a noise of sympathy, reaching out to squeeze his hand. Javert must for once have withheld his familiar speech about the importance of the law and the just punishments for those who broke it, realized Valjean, blinking back tears once more.

"I know how hard your life must have been, Papa. And Javert tells me he noticed you from the beginning, for you were --" Cosette glanced speculatively at the onetime guard. "-- much handsomer than the other prisoners. He said stronger, but I knew what he meant."

With shaking fingers, Valjean reached for his teacup. He noticed that Javert had done the same, as though that beverage had properties that could make them both disappear. "And you --" Valjean managed, "you know --"

Taking pity on him, she reached over and patted his arm again. "I always have, Papa. There are some things the nuns might not wish to affirm, but I do." Her gaze turned limpid. "He also told me about my mother, how she worked in a factory to pay for my things but she got sick and how you sent for me --" Her voice broke. Both he and Javert reached out to put a hand over each of hers. She gave them a brave smile. "There was one question he wouldn't answer and we have never spoken of it. Am I to understand that you are my kinsman, but some other Fauchelevent is my real father?"

Valjean did not allow himself to flinch. "That is right," he said. "I lost most of my family for a time, even old Fauchelevent. When I found him again, in Montreuil, your father was gone from this world. We didn't know that your mother had had a child or I would have brought you to her at once, as she always wished. When at last I learned where you were, just before she went to be with God, I promised her that you would live in my protection."

It was as near to the truth as he dared to speak. Though he was terrified that her heart would break, she only nodded. "No father could have been more gentle and good than you. You raised me in love and you risked yourself to save Marius. I want to hear all there is to know about you, when you are recovered."

Valjean started to say he felt fully recovered, but he had to wipe his eyes, which brought concerned looks from both Cosette and Javert. Instead he took another sip of tea as Javert turned away from them both to finish cooking the eggs.

"Have some bread," Javert said, sliding a heaping plate in front of Valjean and pushing the pots of jam and honey over. Valjean reached out to clasp his hand in thanks, only restraining himself when he remembered Cosette's presence. "We shall never fool her again, Jean," added Javert, letting his fingers slide as if accidentally up Valjean's arm.

"Again?" Cosette said demurely as Javert served her as well, content, it seemed, to play maid to them both.

Clearing his throat, Javert sat with them, distributing forks. "We have received a --" He hemmed again, lowering his eyes to his food. "A bit of news," he concluded, still not looking up.

From the way Cosette looked over at him, Valjean was alerted that this announcement was new to her as well. "Tell us, _chasseur_ ," Valjean said softly, smiling at Cosette when she raised her eyebrows at the nickname.

"I stopped by the house at the Rue Plumet to see whether the street gang had returned. Just as I arrived, so did a letter from the Prefecture addressed to you, which I then promised to deliver. I would not have opened a personal communication, but since you were indisposed, and I wished to make plans quickly if there was a reason to flee once more --"

Valjean hadn't waited to butter his bread, so hungry was he. Yet he stopped eating, staring at Javert, breathless for whatever was troubling him so much to say. "I understand. You were trying to protect me. What did it say?"

Javert came over with the eggs, giving Valjean a relieved look so full of love that it was no wonder Cosette had never been unaware of their affection, even before she'd understood the depth of it. "The letter was from my superior, Monsieur Gisquet, to inform you as my landlord that because of my presumed --" He paused to swallow more tea and sat stiffly in his chair, clearly uncomfortable. "Certain inflammatory statements I made in the report I left, and the fact that my uniform had been found washed up in the river --"

Valjean glanced at Cosette, who looked indignant. "I paid the driver to burn them!" she protested, fingers clenching around her fork as though to brandish it at the lazy coachman.

"Your superior, Monsieur Gisquet, wished to inform me...?" prompted Valjean, but he thought he could guess and his heart was pounding. God had closed many doors in his life, but He had always left another open, and sometimes those doors were large enough for both himself and Javert.

"That I would no longer be bound to my lease with you, as I am presumed to have left the police. They think I am dead. Suicide."

The word hung in the kitchen, laced with horror and sadness. But since the victim was not currently deceased, there were other feelings coursing through Valjean. "What inflammatory things could you have said in your report?" he asked, knowing that he should not smile, for indeed Javert did not.

"While you slept, after I left Cosette with Monsieur Gillenormand, I took myself to the station-house at the Place du Chatelet. I left a note which I titled, 'A Few Observations for the Good of the Service,' which I requested be given to the Prefect of Police. I offered a list of suggestions concerning the treatment of prisoners and the supervision of police officers. It would not have been unreasonable for the Prefect to demand my dismissal for offering such criticism above my station."

"But surely this can be explained. If it is known that you were captured by the revolutionaries..."

"There are none left to vouch for me." Looking at Javert's face, Valjean no longer had any wish to smile even at the good fortune of those around the table. "The students were slaughtered. I saw the body of a child not twelve years old who had recognized me as a police inspector. The only survivor who could identify me from the barricade is that boy you rescued, and in order to do so, he would have to expose himself as a traitor." Cosette gasped, but Javert shook his head. "I have spent all of my life in service to the law, yet in the past two days I have violated it and mocked it by my actions. I helped you to save a revolutionary and and told you the strategies of the National Guard, then I criticized my superiors. If they knew where I was, there would be questions, perhaps even a summons. They would deem that I had disgraced my uniform before it was found in the Seine. I can never go back."

"I'm sorry," Valjean murmured, meaning it, for he could see how much it distressed Javert to have come to this end, though within his heart he felt great relief that Javert would no longer need to spend days among thugs and weeks hiding among revolutionaries who might discover and kill him. "Is there truly nothing to be done?"

"I don't expect that any policeman will cause trouble if I am spotted alive, if that's what you mean." Javert shrugged a bit. "I have often seen policemen out of uniform in the same houses of toler-- " He glanced at Cosette. "Houses where criminal behavior often occurs, where they are expected to patrol as officers when they are on duty. The older records are in disarray. If anyone recognizes me out of uniform, it's likely he will assume that my 'suicide' was only a story given out to protect my identity, and that I am a Sûreté agent who has disguised myself to root out crime."

"What matters is that you both came back safely," Cosette said, setting down her fork and reaching out to either side, clasping each of their hands. "Hearing of your lives, knowing the sacrifices you made for me --" Her voice broke a bit as Valjean rushed to speak.

"It was no sacrifice, _petit ange_ ," he said, covering her hand with his.

Cosette rolled her eyes and looked to Javert for help. "He was never a good liar," Javert informed her. "Just a lucky one."

"Then let us give no reason to lie to one another again, Papa," Cosette said, trying to look very serious. She leaned over and brushed his cheek with a kiss. " _Mon oncle chasseur._ " Javert was so startled that he didn't react when she kissed his cheek as well, but Valjean saw that color rushed up his neck, flooding his face. "I didn't lie when I said I loved Marius," she continued, sliding her hands back into her own lap. "Though I did perhaps omit the frequency of our meetings."

Valjean tried to look like the stern Papa he knew he was not made to be. "Or to mention them at all," he said and she had the grace to blush.

"Your Inspector has already lectured me on the folly of meeting unknown persons," she confessed. Javert did indeed look quite pleased with himself, finally taking a bite of the eggs he had gone to such pains to cook. He could look stern without even trying, though when he did it in the bedroom, it made Valjean want to do things to him that were not stern at all. "But I shall not meet with anyone else, Papa, for Marius loves me as well, he told me so --" She flushed again. "Before he passed out from the terrible pain."

"Or the terrible stench," added Javert. Valjean found his lips twitching again. If they'd been sitting closer he would have given his thigh a squeeze.

Cosette ignored him. "Marius's grandfather says that I may visit and help to nurse Marius in his recovery." The way she intoned it made the statement a question and Valjean was helpless not to nod his approval. "It will all be very proper," she assured them both. "And you both are welcome as well. Marius will want to thank you."

Valjean couldn't help but notice that Cosette was already speaking for the boy, and he could see that Javert had noticed as well. They shared a glance of felicitous harmony and Valjean felt his groin tighten. The long sleep had rejuvenated him and the days before had been fraught with panic and fear. He wanted the comfort of their all-but-marital embrace; he wanted to tell Javert, in the most physical way possible, that he felt safe in his arms.


	14. Chapter 14

It was not possible to be alone with Javert, of course, until much later, after they had brought Cosette to see her Marius and Javert had dictated an anonymous, sternly worded warning to the Prefecture concerning Thénardier's activities in the sewers, robbing the bodies of loyal soldiers. Monsieur Gillenormand welcomed them as if they were friends from long ago who had saved him from some terrible yet shameful grief. 

It was understood among them all that there would be no conversation about Marius's involvement with the student revolutionaries, and as a result no dangerous questions about the Fauchelevent family and how one of their number had come to be at the barricades. When they left, Valjean felt reassured that Marius's grandfather would not go digging into Cosette's past to be certain that she would make an appropriate bride for his grandson.

After sleeping for so many hours, Valjean found that he was restless, so that when he and Javert were at last alone, he could hardly wait to fling himself upon him. He allowed Javert to force him to eat some dinner, but then he could hold himself back no longer, and as soon as they reached the bedroom, he pounced, pressing Javert back on the bed with all his strength.

"Be careful," said Javert, though his eyes were alight with mischief. "You keep forgetting that you're no longer a young man."

"If we had discovered this when we were young men, we would have done it all night and you would not have had a moment's rest." Valjean tossed Javert's clothing to the side in a messy heap, smiling as he exposed and kissed the skin beneath. "Now that you are old enough to retire, it may take us all night to do it."

"I am not old enough to retire," protested Javert. "I have been contemplating what sort of work I am fit for. I am still considering keeping bees. Or working in a stable. I don't suppose the police will sell my horse out of the service to a dead man, but the animal will be of little use to them -- he doesn't wish to let any other man mount him."

"I know exactly how he feels." Valjean grinned, helping Javert remove his own clothing. "Perhaps Marius can be persuaded to buy the horse for you. He could tell the police that you once saved his life and he has formed an attachment to your creature. Save for a few details, it has the virtue of truth."

"I can see that there is no virtue in your thoughts at all," Javert retorted as he flung Valjean's trousers halfway across the room. "Which is well, because there is none in mine either." Their clothing removed, he crawled over Valjean. "I have become a fine rider. Perhaps I could give you lessons, if it would not be too much of a strain for a man your age."

"Oh yes." Valjean was so eager that he did not even return the mockery. "I would very much like to ride you, _chasseur_."

That earned him a kiss, one which did not stop until they were both breathless. "I should let you sleep the day away more often," Javert said, moving his lips over Valjean's. He placed both hands on either side of Valjean's face, kissing down his chin, and, when Valjean arched beneath him, trailing kisses down his neck.

"I am not spending another day in bed unless you're here with me to do this," he replied, letting the need that flared through him quaver in his voice. Shifting beneath the weight of one very determined Inspector, he managed to push out a knee, draping his leg around Javert's.

"I see that you have very strong thighs," Javert responded, though his words were muffled by the way he was indulging his mouth in the hair on Valjean's chest. He trailed his fingers over the inside of Valjean's leg. "Good for balance when mounting your steed." His lips latched around one nipple.

"This ride is not going fast enough," growled Valjean, spearing his fingers into the hair at the back of Javert's neck. He bucked up, off the bed, held down still by the brackets of Javert's legs.

That elicited a chuckle. "It takes patience to ride a fiery mount," lectured Javert, pressing kisses onto his belly. "You were the one speaking of making love all night and now you make such demands --"

"If you do this to me all night, I'll go mad," Valjean grumbled, bending his knee up to allow for passage of a hungrily seeking mouth.

"I would not let you go mad," Javert said, rubbing his beard over Valjean's prick. Some of the fluid collecting there dewed in the hairs. The fingers trailing along his thigh dropped, tracing a line over his balls, nudging them aside to fondle the quivering skin below. Tilting his face, he dropped a kiss over the upraised prick but didn't linger, though Valjean was tempted to beg for more. "You have a firm pommel -- are you certain you wish to ride, not to be ridden?"

Valjean cupped his face and smiled. "I wish to straddle you and feel such a powerful mount between my legs."

Javert turned his face and sucked one of Valjean's fingers into his mouth before releasing it. "You know I can deny you nothing," he said, kissing the soft place just below Valjean's prick before pushing his face in closer. His tongue found its way behind Valjean's balls, teasing the wrinkled skin beneath them while Valjean groaned his approval.

After a few blissful minutes, feeling Javert's tongue slowly press him open in an increasingly slick slide that sent pleasure deep into his body, Valjean nudged his leg against Javert's shoulder. "I believe you will need the saddle oil." Though he was loath to interrupt the pleasure Javert's mouth was giving him, he knew too well that, even at his age, he could become distracted and lose control before he would wish.

Grinning up from between Valjean's upraised legs, Javert nodded. "Let me ready your seat, then you may ride and tug on the reins as quickly as you wish."

Valjean reached over first, shaking his head. "No, let me show you how eager I am to ride at your command," he said. They shifted in the bed easily, lips brushing against each other as Javert sprawled back against the headboard, bending his legs up while Valjean presented his back, anchoring his knees between Javert's.

Spilling out some of the oil, Valjean coated his fingers, turning his head to make sure he had Javert's attention before bending enough to reach between his buttocks and stretch himself. A strangled noise came from behind him and Valjean righted himself, looking over his shoulder again. "What is wrong?"

"Don't stop!" growled Javert and Valjean smiled, giving his knees a bit more space apart, bending back to stroke himself from behind. He nudged a finger in, feeling his own flesh respond to the touch.

"I am only finishing what you have begun," Valjean protested, though his voice was full of merry laughter and the arousal that he never bothered to hide. "I need to be able to do this --" He pushed in two fingers, curling them inside himself. "-- before you will fit, _mon cheval_."

"You are going to make me go off like a frisky colt if you continue swishing your tail like that," said Javert in such a tone that Valjean turned again and shifted. Javert stretched his legs out so that Valjean could straddle them, leaning on Javert's shoulders to get into place. There was a momentary pause to use the oil again, then Javert held his cock ready. Their gazes leveled as Valjean lowered himself down slowly, letting his body open for Javert, letting Javert's prick surge into him.

"Oh, _chasseur_ ," he said, the moan as soft as prayer.

Javert slid both hands along Valjean's thighs, coming to rest on his hips. "I will carry you anywhere," he said, "Fast as the wind."

Valjean dug his hands into Javert's shoulders, lifting himself just enough to feel the slow slide of cock within him before plunging back down. " _Mon étalon_ ," he said, dipping his head for a kiss. Javert devoured his mouth, expressing his desire in a moan. They were moving together, the rhythm familiar and enticing, pulling on them both.

Fingers closed around Valjean's prick, letting him thrust into the sheath they made. "Let me have the reins," breathed Javert, between kisses they both needed as much as the steady thrusts.

"Yes, guide me, show me," Valjean moaned, knowing he was speaking nonsense but knowing Javert understood. "Make me gallop!" Javert's hand moved faster than his hips could buck off the bed, he knew after all this time just how much pressure to use. "Oh, I hope I will not fly off and reach our destination before you..."

"You know that if you do, I will follow." Javert was watching him with a warm, open-mouthed smile. "You must know by now that I would follow you anywhere."

Valjean could not speak, and at one time might have been ashamed of the sounds coming from his throat, but when Javert looked at him like that, he had no room in his heart for any feelings that were not joyous and thrilled. He sank down again and again on Javert's hard cock, knowing that he would ache in the morning as if he had had a hard ride on an actual horse and knowing that he would not regret a moment.

"Ride me to the finish," grunted Javert, his eyes falling shut. It took only a few more strokes of his hand to make Valjean cry out and shudder, gushing seed over his hand and belly, unable even to form the sounds of Javert's name, but it didn't matter. He had scarcely caught his breath and begun to move upon Javert again, sliding his hands up the damp hair of Javert's chest to flick his thumbs over the nipples as he knew Javert liked, when he felt a sharp thrust as Javert's hips jerked off the bed, pushing him deep inside, spilling himself with a loud groan.

"You need to be washed and brushed, _mon cheval_ ," Valjean panted when at last he found his voice.

"If there is any water left in Paris after getting you clean." Something dark shadowed Javert's face, a memory of the barricade and the hours after, but then it was as if the moon had moved from behind a cloud and let Valjean watch the smile slowly cross his face. "If we do keep a horse, I will have to be careful not to come to bed smelling of the stable."

"You kissed me when I came out of the sewer. I daresay I would love you no less if you smelled like horse." Shifting, he moved to Javert's side and wrapped an arm around him, heedless of the stickiness that covered Javert's belly. "I will never go away, and we will be together every day."

"You sound as besotted as Cosette is with that boy," grumbled Javert, but Valjean knew that it was not intended as a criticism. "You know how strange it will be for me to wake tomorrow with no sort of plan for the day, or the week, or the rest of the year. I feel as if I should go track down Thénardier, then I recall that I no longer have the authority to arrest him."

"I have a plan for you. I intend to wake and kiss you." Valjean squeezed him around the waist. "Then I suppose we will need to visit Marius again. And after that...perhaps while Cosette is tending to him, we might drive out of the city. We can look at stables, and farms, and apiaries."

"We won't have papers."

"We will have money, and I've found that that is much more important." Valjean smiled a little, reaching up to stroke Javert's jaw. "Do you know what I would like to do? When a little time has passed, I would like to visit Montreuil. I doubt that there are many left who would recognize us. We could arrive in the evening, and hide our faces behind scarves, and visit the wharf. Perhaps we could even find the place where all this began."

He felt Javert rumble with a laugh. "You're presuming that some strict new police inspector has not eradicated all the vice in the town."

"If you could not do that, _mon inspecteur_ , I doubt it can be done."

"Ah, but I was led astray." Javert's lips brushed his forehead. "For which I thank God every day. What has become of my rosary? You know how precious it is to me."

"I believe it was still in your pocket when I pulled off your clothes. I'm sure it's quite safe. If it survived the barricade, and the sewer, and the washing, then some divine force must protect it."

"Love protects it." Gentle fingers stroked through Valjean's hair. "I think love must protect us."

"Only God could do that," murmured Valjean, his face nestling beneath Javert's chin.

"I believe you." Javert nodded against the top of his head. "But where God and love are concerned, I can't tell the difference. I wouldn't have recognized either one without the other. I only learned to praise them both with you, _bien-aimé_."


	15. Chapter 15

" _....cinq...six...sept...huit..._ "

Javert's voice had taken on a warning, even menacing tone, and Valjean could not help smiling to himself as he heard the sounds of laughter and scurrying. Playing _cache-cache_ had been Cosette's idea to get the children out from underfoot while the adults talked, but they had not even settled into their chairs before Fantine burst in to declare that Georges was not waiting the proper amount of time before coming to look for the others, and Javert had been recruited to enforce the rules.

Now even Marius was hiding somewhere in his own home while Valjean concealed himself between the curtains and wall next to the window in the library. He hoped that the curtains were long enough to cover his shoes. It was likely that Georges had cheated in the game just to force Javert to play with them. The children -- those whom Cosette had birthed, plus the two she and Marius had taken in when he discovered that they were sleeping in the street -- enjoyed nothing better than to be found and apprehended by Javert, who would often appear with a giggling, squirming child under each arm.

They rarely played the game in Valjean's home, which was much smaller and had few interesting places to hide. Invariably a child would open a drawer in his bedroom or a closet in the room they all had been told was Javert's, which made it necessary to keep up the appearance that Javert kept nightclothes in his own room and that Valjean did not keep anything naughty in the desk by the bed. He suspected it would be easier to explain away such items to Georges than to Marius, whose mortified reaction, when Cosette finally made clear to him the relationship between her father and Javert, had been, "But surely they are too old for such things!"

Indeed, thought Valjean with a sigh, they were getting too old for such things with the frequency and vigor of a few years before, but that did not stop him from wanting to touch Javert, to kiss him, to lean against him while he was reading, to curl up in his arms at night. Remembering the subject that Cosette had wished to discuss without the children present, he sighed again, asking himself how he could best satisfy the needs of everyone in his family, all of whom were precious to him.

" _...vingt-cinq!_ " Now he could hear Javert's footsteps, which would be deceptively loud till they abruptly vanished. Javert could sneak up on the children more silently than a cat. Valjean did not expect to be the object of his pursuit in this game, so he was peering out the edge of the window at the garden, watching a bird among the flowers, not paying attention to the noises from the house, when a voice very near to him -- just on the other side of the curtain -- murmured, "You cannot hide from me, Jean Valjean."

A helpless smile pushed across his face. "I never could, _chasseur_. Though I have rarely tried." Indeed, Valjean's true name was as much a private endearment as _chasseur_ , for Cosette's children did not know it. Valjean liked to think that if old Fauchelevent could look down from Heaven, he would be very happy to know of the generations that considered him a relation. "Now that you have caught me, will you carry me under your arm back to the parlor?"

"I'm tempted to do so but I don't wish to shock Marius. Again." They chuckled together softly on either side of the curtain. When Valjean pressed his hips forward, he could feel the sturdiness of Javert through the thick material. "That, for instance, is hardly behavior he would consider appropriate for a man your age."

"We could cut a hole in the curtain and pretend we were back at the wharf." Valjean's hand slid across the fabric, molding itself to the shape of Javert's thigh until it found the bulge that it was seeking. "I could get on my knees, and you could thrust your cock through the hole, and I could..."

The cock whose outlines he could barely feel through curtains and trousers twitched feebly against his fingers. "You are the most wicked of men," proclaimed Javert huskily. "I should carry you back and make an example of you."

"Surely you would not spank my bottom in front of the others? You would have to explain why your trousers have a lump in them." With a nearly silent giggle, Valjean gave the bulge another squeeze through the curtain. "Marius would ask us to leave his house and never come back instead of suggesting that we come live with them here."

Even with the fabric separating them, Valjean could feel Javert tense. "Is that what Cosette was talking to you about? And why they wanted to confer with us? I imagined they only wanted to tell us that they expect another baby."

"It seems they believe that we may be too old to be left on our own -- not right now, but in the future. We won't always be able to tend the garden or go to market for ourselves. Of course, that isn't what Cosette said. She only said that it made the children very sad to see us so seldom and that if one of us were to catch a bad cough as I did last winter, it would be much easier to care for us here without having to move us in the cold."

He felt Javert's hand press his own through the curtain. "She does make some sense." All at once Valjean wondered whether Javert had broached the subject with Cosette, for Javert had been terrified a few months past when Valjean had had a fever, though it had been gone in a few days.

"We won't be young and robust forever. And I think you would like to be closer to the children." Javert did not have to confess that he, too, had grown attached to the little imps, perhaps most of all when they came up with wildly creative explanations for why the rules were unfair and attempted to negotiate around them. "We wouldn't be a risk for them. The Thénardiers are long gone from Paris. I even think you would enjoy seeing more of Marius, now that he has devoted himself to working with the law."

"The thought of that man as a lawyer makes me shudder. He will try to make it legal to steal from the rich to give to the poor. I suppose that if he brings home more waifs who need a roof over their heads, you'll help him to feed them and expect me to help set them on the path to responsibility." But Valjean could hear the humor in Javert's tone. "If it would make you happy, _mon cher_ , I would be willing. But I begin to wonder whether you're looking for a reason to push me out of your bed."

"You know perfectly well that I wouldn't consider coming here if I didn't believe we could continue to share a bed." Valjean wiggled his hips, making the curtain ripple between them. "The bedrooms in the north wing share a cabinet. No one would ever need to know where either of us slept."

"Except the maid," grumbled Javert. "Maybe it's because the children are getting old enough to ask questions that Cosette and Marius wish to change our situation." His hands slid up Valjean's arms, pressing the curtain fabric around him as if to demonstrate what a flimsy disguise it was to one who knew where to look.

"I hardly think we fool the maid when we visit, no matter how early you creep out of my room. _Chasseur_ , I don't believe they would ask us to live here if they found our behavior offensive. They have always been content to overlook what must be apparent to anyone who visits our home, and they have never tried to shield the children from it. Will you think about it? I do worry about what would happen if one of us became very ill. I doubt that I could leave your side for long enough to fetch a doctor. And if something unexpected were to happen to either of us, we would need the family near.. I am certain that Marius would let you keep your beloved horse..."

Before Javert could reply, thumping footsteps could be heard, then a door swung open. "You are supposed to be looking for us!" cried Georges.

"I am looking. See, I have found your grandfather." Javert pushed the curtain to the side, revealing Valjean, who smiled at the boy and held his hands up in surrender. "I could not march him back to serve his penalty right away because he was praying." Slipping his hand into a pocket, Javert held up the rosary that had twice had to be restrung, but he refused to allow Valjean to give him a new one, just as Valjean refused to allow any object on his mantelpiece besides the Bishop's candlesticks.

Georges was not fooled. "I think you have been here all this time, talking about stupid adult things like the law!" With that, he turned and stomped out of the room, calling, "Uncle Javert is not even playing with us!"

"You see?" whispered Valjean. "You must spend more time with that boy and teach him proper respect for the law."

"On that subject, your entire family may be hopeless," muttered Javert.

Just then Cosette appeared in the doorway, since Georges had failed to close the door behind him. Seeing her silhouetted so, Valjean noticed what he had failed to see earlier, proving that Javert had lost none of his investigative skills, for Cosette indeed appeared to be expecting another child. He put a hand on his belly and tilted his head, asking a question which she answered with a wide smile and a nod. A grin of delight blossomed across his face as she stepped into the room.

"Surely Uncle Javert would not disobey the rules?" she asked coyly, then covered her eyes with a hand when she realized where they were standing. "Tell me my son did not find you kissing behind the curtains!"

"We were only talking, _petit ange_. Very respectably, on opposite sides of the curtain where Javert found me hiding -- those are the rules of _jeu de cache-cache_. What wicked things could we possibly do with the curtain between us?" When Cosette spread apart two of her fingers to peek at him, Valjean smiled at her again. "We were speaking about what you suggested."

"That you come live here with us? You have taken care of me for all my life, Papa, it is time that you let me take care of you. Uncle Javert, too. We owe you both so much."

"You are certain that Marius feels the same way?"

"I am entirely certain. You know how much he enjoys debating the law with you both -- he says it keeps his wits sharp. And since I promised always to tell you the truth, I will admit that we would be very glad of your presence when the children want attention. I know that you'll teach them about God and love just as you taught me." Her expression turned merry. "I expect that _mon oncle_ will even try to impress upon them the necessity of obeying the rules."

Javert glanced from Valjean to Cosette. "Marius would let us occupy the north wing?" he asked.

"Certainly. None of us will bother you there. You could use the corner room as your own library, if you wished."

"We are happy to share our books. But your father is not a young man. He needs assistance keeping himself presentable." Valjean coughed quietly in protest, which did not deter Javert in the least. "He will not tolerate nurses or servants, only myself."

To her credit, Cosette did not even blink. "I understand," she said. "I'll have the doors removed between the cabinet and the bedrooms. That way you'll be able to reach him quickly if he should have trouble dressing or cleaning himself." At Valjean's splutter of outrage, she broke into a grin. "I shall explain to Marius that it embarrasses you to speak of such matters, so he should leave the arrangements to me." And with that, she darted out of the room.

" _You_ are the most wicked of men," growled Valjean when she had gone. "You are the one who should have his bottom spanked. No -- I should have told her that you like to be groomed like a horse, or to hide your face behind a wall while a notorious criminal sucks your cock --"

"You would never dare." It was true that they were idle threats, but it had been worth murmuring the words just to watch Javert's face turn scarlet. "You would not want your daughter or her husband to know that we first came together in a game of find-the-treasure at the wharf in Montreuil. And that, even at your age, you still like to play _cache-cache_. In the bedroom. Naked."

" _Chasseur_ , I fear they have long suspected." Grabbing the edge of the curtain, Valjean whirled it around them both, giving them a moment of privacy wrapped in the opaque material so that he could kiss Javert's mouth. "But they forgive us. They love me, and they love you. I believe we can --"

His words were interrupted by a high, shrill scream that made them try to leap apart, though the twisted tube of curtain nearly tore as they struggled to free themselves. "A mouse! I saw a mouse!" shrieked Jacques from the next room. "Get it out, take it away!"

"Our expertise in domestic matters is needed," said Javert solemnly, straightening his clothes.

"I don't know how they have survived without us here." Valjean nodded gravely in return, glancing down to be certain that he was presentable. "We shall have to make some effort to assist."

"When it comes to helping people to change for the better, I have never known you to fail, _mon sauveteur_. And we will be together."

"Always."

With mutual smiles, they headed for the doorway and the lively noises of their family beyond.


End file.
